Milkrun was onboarding drivers for GoGet car deliveries weeks before closure

Earlier this week Milkrun announced that it was closing its doors and letting go of its entire workforce. However, according to sources it was beginning to roll out car deliveries over the last month via carshare network GoGet, with new drivers being onboarded as late as last week.

Milkrun was originally launched in late 2021 and quickly banked two significant rounds of funding — $11 million and $75 million respectively. The latter included contributions from AirTree as well as Grok Ventures and Skip Capital.

The ‘instant grocery delivery’ app offered customers delivery under ten minutes. This was achieved through ‘dark warehouses’ scattered throughout the inner city suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne.

These ‘hubs’ would be tasked with packing an order within 90 seconds of it landing, which generally required multiple people picking simultaneously. The company used e-bike startup Zoomo for riders to make the deliveries on.

Milkrun onboarded drivers for GoGet car deliveries in its last month of operations

According to a source who wished to remain anonymous, this business model began to branch out within the last month of Milkrun’s operations.

The company had begun the process of onboarding drivers to fulfil larger orders via use of GoGet, an Australian carshare network that can be booked instantly. According to the source, this was also to help fulfil order that were further out from the hubs.

Unlike Uber Carshare (formerly Car Next Door), GoGet owns its entire fleet. According to the company there is a focus on vehicle redundancy, meaning there’s always vehicles available to book. This is particularly important for its business customers.

So it makes sense this would be the kind of car-delivery approach that Milkrun would take.

“They were onboarding new drivers last week still. So the closure was very very abrupt and it didn’t seem like their changes had the time to play out,” the source said to SmartCompany.

“I was onboarded as a rider initially, and eventually got set up as a driver as well. I didn’t actually get to do a car delivery because I only just set myself up as a driver the week gone and am now away. Cars worked through GoGet, and I think the intention was to facilitate larger orders so they’d turn a greater profit per order.”

Going down fighting

Despite the closure and criticism of the business model, overall sentiment from sources has been largely positive about Milkrun, particularly its people and its fight to survive.

“During onboarding they were really open about the company having been thinned recently, but they were very productive and efficient about creating new approaches to turn things around,” the source said.

“They were also very efficient with their onboarding, and had some urgency about it which told me they really needed more staff.”