Veho, a logistics platform that offers next-day delivery for e-commerce brands, announced May 25 it expanded its last-mile delivery and returns service into Florida with facilities in Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Orlando and plans to open in Jacksonville and Tampa by year-end.
The Jacksonville location is in the Southbound Distribution Center, according to a building permit.
Veho said it will add hundreds of full-time employees in the state by year-end 2023 for the expansion and operation of the new facilities.
It said there also are “thousands of independent driver-partners already using the Veho app to earn.”
Veho said the push into the Florida market enables its e-commerce partners to provide consistent next-day package delivery and doorstep returns to their customers, including real-time customer support, 99.9% on-time delivery rates, “and an average 4.9 star customer rating.”
“As a company built around enabling brands to deliver best-in-class customer experience, we make sure to provide a high level of collaboration to our retail customers,” said Itamar Zur, Veho co-founder and CEO, in a news release.
“This is why we are expanding our footprint specifically in areas where our customers see the biggest value,” he said.
Veho said that with its company-operated facilities in the market, including sort centers and depots, it provides next-day delivery from a brand’s distribution center to customers’ doors via its technology platform and a network of independent crowdsourced drivers.
It said driver-partners can select routes independently.
“With our newest Veho hub in Orlando and several more planned to open this year, we aim to bring the delivery and returns experience enabled by the Veho platform to the majority of Floridians,” says Chelsea Beyer, general manager of Veho Southeast, in the release.
Veho, based in New York City, said it serves 19 cities in five major U.S. regions and is expanding rapidly.
In Jacksonville, Veho is building-out at Southbound Distribution Center at Powers Avenue east of St. Augustine Road.
The city approved a permit May 6 for Jim Cooper Construction Co. Inc of Birmingham, Alabama, to build-out 59,500 square feet of space for Veho at 2700 Powers Ave. at a construction cost of almost $1.1 million. The property is between the Lakewood and Bowden areas.
Scannell Properties of Indianapolis is the Southbound Distribution Center developer.
Cushman & Wakefield Managing Directors Tyler Newman and Jacob Horsley are the leasing representatives.
Veho says it is “built for e-commerce,” technology-driven and partners with brands, creating a 20% increase in customer repurchase.
A review response letter with the permit identifies Warby Parker and Hello Fresh as examples of Veho’s retailers.
“At Veho facilities, packages are dropped off via trucks at our dock doors, sorted, and then picked up and delivered by on-demand drivers,” wrote architect Justin Rogers, president of Five South Architecture LLC of Birmingham.
The drivers enter Veho warehouses in their own vehicles, pick up packages and drop them off at customer homes, it wrote.
The warehouses do not use racking systems because all of the packages that come into a Veho facility go out within 24 hours.
“Veho utilizes proprietary technology tools to recruit and schedule on-demand (drivers) in a way that allows for staggered pick-ups and delivery to minimize traffic backups on site,” the architect wrote.
The shipveho.com site says Veho gives package recipients greater insight and control, “letting them know when they will receive their package, when drivers are en route, and enables real-time rescheduling, address changes, and personal delivery instructions.”
In Jacksonville, it posted a job opening for a supervisor of ground operations for delivery options.
It says the ground operations supervisor will work with warehouse associates and leads. The position will be responsible for the development of the warehouse staff and for the accuracy of reports, scheduling, communication cross-functionally, “and ensure sort and launch packages are done in an efficient and safe manner, troubleshooting any issues with our cross-functional teams along the way.”
The posting describes Veho as a growth company that looks for team members to grow with it.
Veho’s LinkedIn site says it was founded in 2016.
The shipveho.com site says that in 2017, Veho Technologies, “which aims to replace large delivery trucks with a platform that enables anyone to deliver packages in his or her car,” took home $75,000 as the winner of the Harvard Business School New Venture Competition.
The site says Veho started as a school project while co-founder Itamar Zur attended Harvard Business School.
As of Feb. 15, Velo announced it raised about $300 million in capital from investors, valuing the company at more than $1.5 billion.
In December it raised $125 million followed by $170 million in February.
It said it expects to grow its headcount from nearly 500 employees to 2,000 by end of 2022, including hiring more than 150 additional software engineers, “and invest in corporate development capabilities to evaluate opportunities for strategic acquisitions.”
