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The coronavirus pandemic has brought about a new demand for delivery services of all kinds. With businesses closed to the public and more people staying home, people are turning to different services to deliver the food, products and supplies they need to go about their day-to-day lives.
As a result of this growing market, UK-based motorcycle club The Bike Shed has collaborated with courier app Gophr to get motorcycle riders involved in the delivery of some important products. These two organizations have developed an app allowing The Bike Shed Community Response Volunteers across the United Kingdom to act as couriers for a variety of necessary products during this health pandemic with a strong focus being on personal protective equipment or PPE. The Bike Shed is currently working with the British Red Cross to prioritize and assign tasks.
In a recent post on the Bike Shed’s website, they discussed how their service would get motorcycle riders involved in the transportation and delivery of “assembled PPE gear to front-line healthcare workers, along with food (and) medicine.” The post discussed that while many motorcycle communities have coordinated volunteer efforts through social media, the use of a mobile app that can assign and track different tasks would greatly streamline the process.
The app is open to all volunteers with the only requirements being a road legal bike, a license and insurance. The partnership has even garnered the support of Indian Motorcycles who have donated a few of their larger cruiser-type motorcycles to allow for bigger deliveries and longer distances.
Even though this app is only in the early stages of use, The Bike Shed has already had hundreds of volunteers sign up for the program and the group is actively fulfilling orders on a daily basis.
This partnership between The Bike Shed and Gophr really goes to show that even in the most uncertain times, riders will still rise to the occasion and help wherever they can. It also opens the door for similar services to be developed here in the United States. The Bike Shed has plans to open a location in Los Angeles in the near future so it would not be too farfetched to think that this courier service might make its way across the pond as well, possibly even becoming available in the Midwest.
For more motorcycle-related news and articles, please check out the Current News for Riders page on hupy.com.
