Openforce and Ryder Offer Commercial Vehicle Rentals for Last-Mile Delivery

Openforce and Ryder have teamed up to offer commercial vehicle rentals to independent contractors.

With this collaboration, independent contractors using the Openforce platform will be able to rent sprinter vans and box trucks from Ryder at exclusive discounted rates, the companies said in a Thursday (June 8) press release.

This offering is meant to meet the needs of independent contractors who are looking to transition to using these sorts of trucks for last-mile delivery rather than using sedan-type vehicles for local urban delivery, according to the press release.

“Independent contractors enrolled with Openforce can now save up to 40% on commercial vehicle rentals, a crucial factor for maintaining competitiveness in this high-demand market,” Openforce CEO Wendy Greenland said in the release.

By renting commercial-use vehicles rather than acquiring them, independent delivery drivers can avoid long-term financial commitments, eliminate the costs of maintenance and repair, and use the vehicles only when they need them, according to the press release.

This new offering joins the Openforce platform that is used by 800,000 independent contractors to build their businesses and by contracting companies to handle their onboarding, contracting and settlement processing when using independent contractors, the release said.

“As a leading provider of trucking and commercial fleet rentals, we look forward to working with Openforce as our companies share a common mission of offering resources that support the independent contractor model,” Shawn Davis, head of enterprise sales and strategic partnerships at Ryder, said in the release. “This initiative aims to streamline operations as we expand this benefit to Openforce’s extensive independent contractor network.”

Last-mile delivery is seeing increased competition from smaller players taking on the established companies like UPS and FedEx.

Inflation and shipping problems have disrupted the status quo, pushing more companies to make deals with multiple carriers for the last-mile segment.

There is also a substantial demand for products and services for gig economy drivers, evidenced by micromobility.com’s intention to merge with EVmo and transition from a sharing business to a B2B enterprise that will offer long-term vehicle rentals.

EVmo has estimated the total addressable market (TAM) for renting vehicles to gig economy drivers to be between 300,000 and 500,000 vehicles.