‘Uber for gasoline’ tries to relieve pump pain
Like so many people juggling a career, a commute and unexpected day-to-day chores, Whitney Block’s life unfurls in a perpetual state of semi-controlled chaos.
The 30-year-old Redwood, Calif., resident works as a nurse practitioner, a demanding job that requires her to travel to three clinics, driving as long as an hour and a half some days to meet with patients.
To ensure that her weeks run smoothly, Block, an avid planner, has turned to technology, using AmazonFresh and Google Express to stock her fridge and order products ranging from toilet paper to electronics. She can’t remember the last time she pushed a shopping cart through a store.
Until a few months ago, there remained a single irritating chore that Block couldn’t seem to avoid: filling her car up with gas.
Her solution: a Silicon Valley start-up that functions like a mobile gas station, using “field technicians” to fill up vehicles when they’re not being driven. The company, known as Yoshi, is part of a crop of gas-delivery startups billing themselves as “Uber for gasoline.” Yoshi members pay a $20 (U.S.) monthly subscription fee, plus the cost of gas, a deal that Block — who considers gas stations dirty and inconvenient — said she couldn’t resist.
“The more demanding my career has become, the more I’ve realized I don’t want my free time to be consumed by mundane tasks that I don’t want to be doing — and that includes going to the gas station to fill up,” she said.
“It’s not fun, it’s not stimulating and it’s not enjoyable,” she added. “If I can pay somebody to get it done for me, I will totally do that.”
For many drivers, a trip to the gas station is a forgettable inconvenience that occurs once or twice a week. But Yoshi is banking on the idea that there are millions of people like Block all over the country: urban professionals whose demanding schedules and disposable income make them ideal candidates for outsourcing a chore that has been a feature of car ownership since the inception of the automobile.
The company seeks to be more than a concierge service for the affluent, and it arrives at a time when companies such as Uber, Amazon.com, Whole Foods (now owned by Amazon) and Netflix are trying to capitalize on the appeal of convenience. (Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.)
In the past12 months, the company has spread from three cities in the United States to 16, including Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston and Los Angeles, picking up investments from superstar athletes Kevin Durant and Joe Montana along the way.
While cities remain clogged with cars, gas stations are becoming harder to find. Between 1994 and 2015, the number of retail fuelling sites in the United States dropped about 25 per cent.