Rural Retailer Reroutes the Final Mile

THE CUSTOMER

Blain’s Farm & Fleet is a family-owned-and-operated specialty retailer with 45 locations throughout Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Describing itself as The Modern General Store, the business was established in 1955 and is headquartered in Janesville, Wisconsin.

THE PROVIDER

Roadie, a UPS company, is a logistics management and crowdsourced delivery platform. Founded in 2014, Roadie offers businesses fast, flexible, and asset-light logistics solutions for last-mile delivery.

By partnering with Roadie to achieve same-day delivery for its customer base, Blain’s Farm & Fleet stays true to an ethos that has guided the retailer since it first began operating 70 years ago. It’s a company that treats its customers like neighbors and prides itself on providing quality products at fair and honest prices.

“We saw demand from our customers, through both direct feedback and the market shift in how customers—our neighbors—like to receive their goods,” says Eliza Ollinger, director and general manager of digital commerce at Blain’s Farm & Fleet.

The Midwest retailer markets itself as a one-stop shop, carrying everything from home goods to automotive parts, food and beverage selections to sporting and outdoor equipment, lawn and garden to farm and livestock supplies, and more. It even carries toys and games, a category that served as the catalyst for offering same-day delivery.

Blain’s in Toyland

As a lead-up to the holiday shopping period each year, all of Blain’s 45 stores celebrate toys in a big way by devoting large sections of floorspace to an enormous selection. The chain calls the promotion Toyland and it has been a cherished family tradition since 1957. Come late October, shoppers can find just about any toy they could possibly want, either in person or online.

In 2023, sensing the constraints of an earlier than usual cut-off date for holiday shipping by the traditional carriers who fulfill its online orders, Blain’s decided to try a different tack. It reached out to Roadie to see if the crowdsourced delivery platform could launch quickly to fill in the gap and extend those deadlines for its neighbors.

A GOOD MATCH

Many of the neighbors that Blain’s Farm & Fleet serves live in rural and farming communities so the company needed a last-mile delivery provider familiar with the nature of the territory. The retailer had networked with Roadie at business expos and implemented the platform in 2020, but prior to promoting it in December 2023, utilization was infrequent.

“We have a couple of other partnerships in that space, and we were specializing, and we still do specialize in rural delivery,” says Dennis Moon, COO at Roadie.

By tapping into a fleet of more than 200,000 independent drivers nationwide, Roadie enables retailers to offer local delivery in more than 97% of the United States.

Blain’s Farm & Fleet already had a well-received “buy online, pick up at drive-thru service” in place at its stores. However, in the spirit of continuing to adapt and expand its products and services to meet neighbors’ diverse lifestyles and needs, expedited door-to-door delivery began to make a lot of sense.

In late 2023, shipping constraints indicated it was the perfect time to promote the service in new ways. Encouraged by Roadie’s willingness and assurance it could scale demand, Blain’s Farm & Fleet decided to offer free same-day delivery (with a $35 order minimum) to its neighbors in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

The results were astounding. Within the first three weeks of implementing the service, Blain’s experienced a 738% surge in same-day delivery order volume and a 378% year-over-year increase in same-day delivery revenue compared to the same period in 2022.

Suddenly, what had initially been viewed as a stopgap measure to circumvent unusually early shipping cut-off dates began to look like an essential means of delivering merchandise to consumers. Demand was obviously there, so Blain’s decided to offer the same-day delivery option year-round.

ON THE GROUND

Roadie enables local delivery to more than 97% of U.S. households by providing access to more than 200,000 independent drivers nationwide. The service allows businesses to offer their customers delivery options for almost any industry—from florists to home goods.

Being a crowdsourced delivery platform enables Roadie to deliver unique benefits to a company like Blain’s Farm & Fleet. It often happens that some of the same neighbors the Midwest retailer considers its customers also happen to work for Roadie.

“We deliver in places where the population is maybe 1,000 people,” says Moon. “There’s a high likelihood it truly is your neighbor who has jumped onto the platform to perform the delivery. The benefit is they understand how farms work, and where things need to go.”

Being Neighborly

Such ready familiarity resonates with a business like Blain’s Farm & Fleet, which dates its origins to a time when two brothers, Claude and Bert Bain, simply wanted to do right by their neighbors.

“The business grew because we started carrying everything for our neighbors,” says Ollinger. “Our assortment evolved because we wanted to provide anything and everything anyone would need. We’re just here to serve our communities.”

The company has received compliments from neighbors who commend Roadie drivers for taking the time to learn, or who just seem to know intuitively, where to place goods that they’ve ordered. “We’ve been pleased with the Roadie service level,” Ollinger confirms.

Third-party delivery works well for many items in Blain’s inventory. Cumbersome items such as large bags of mulch, livestock feed, and pet food fall into that category.

“If an item is too heavy or too bulky for a typical passenger vehicle, we see more frequently that our neighbors like to have it delivered to them the same day via Roadie,” says Ollinger. “From our perspective, it solves a problem for our neighbors.”

Roadie typically doesn’t interface with a customer’s warehouse management system (WMS). “There’s no need,” explains Moon. “In ship-from-store situations such as Blain’s, they know if they have an item on hand.”

Meanwhile, the platform’s application program interface (API) is easy to integrate and can tie directly into potential customers’ systems.

“When somebody places an online order, and lives within range of a store, same day-delivery as part of the order process is always an option,” says Moon.

What varies is how retailers provide awareness to their end customers about same-day delivery and whether or not there’ll be a charge. Roadie leaves that kind of decision-making up to the retailer.

Roadie also strives to accommodate the ebbs and flows of businesses such as Blain’s. Spring generally sees an uptick in orders for lawn and garden supplies, for example, and then there is the retailer’s annual toy extravaganza, which jumpstarted the partnership in the first place.

During regularly scheduled conversations, the partners discuss potential improvements. “We’ll ask if they want to add SKUs we may not service,” says Moon. “Because Blain’s may have bigger items they want to start adding into the same-day network, we’ll ask if we need to get additional capabilities for our drivers—such as trailers or other equipment. We talk regularly to continually build onto the partnership and add more opportunities for both parties to succeed.”

Currently, Roadie doesn’t handle delivery of the larger agricultural equipment that Blain’s Farm and Fleet sells, but everything is up for discussion. “We continuously evaluate performance and consumer sentiment to understand how we can best evolve the same-day delivery service for our neighbors,” says Ollinger.

Exclusive Service

Blain’s Farm & Fleet relies on other providers to handle next-day and multiple-day shipping, but Roadie is its exclusive final-mile provider for same day delivery.

“Same-day delivery drives incremental business for us because consumers like the immediacy and the fact they can receive their goods within the day,” Ollinger notes.

“Roadie has increased our sales,” she concludes. “It has helped us better serve our neighbors because we’re able to deliver the products they want, when and how they want them.”

Casebook Study: One for the Roadie

The Challenge

Feeling constrained by traditional carriers’ shipping cut-off dates during an important holiday promotion period, specialty retailer Blain’s Farm & Fleet searched for a way to better serve its customers.

The Solution

Blain’s partnered with the logistics management and crowdsourced delivery platform Roadie, a UPS company, to offer same-day delivery for online holiday shopping.

Results

Within the first three days of implementing same-day delivery, Blain’s experienced a 738% surge in order volume and a 378% year-over-year increase in revenue compared to the same period one year earlier. The retailer decided to offer the option year-round.

Next Steps

As Blain’s continuously evaluates how it can better serve its customer base, Roadie offers considerations such as RoadieXD, a nationwide network of cross-docks that delves deeper into the supply chain.