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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 semicontrolled 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 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 startup 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 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.
In the past 12 months, Yoshi company has spread from three cities nationwide to 16, including Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., picking up investments from superstar athletes Kevin Durant and Joe Montana along the way.
Yoshi, which competes with other gasdelivery startups on the West Coast, has to convince potential customers that the subscription is worthwhile, particularly in cities with ample public transit.
Not everyone is comfortable with the idea of inexperienced startups lugging around tanks of flammable liquid, though Yoshi claims their fuel tanks — which are small enough to fit in the back of the company’s delivery fleet of Ford pickups — conform to local laws and are certified by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“Some of the [companies] are using 1,000-gallon tanks,” Greg Andersen, a division chief in the California state fire marshal’s office, told the Guardian newspaper. “If they’re going into the basement parking lot of a high-rise, that actually is a large concern.”
Yoshi field technicians deliver gas to parking garages and high-rise buildings when necessary. The company says its field techs are hazmat-certified and have not had a single spill in three years of operation.
The automotive industry has taken notice. The rise of ride-hailing and car-sharing is prompting a fundamental re-evaluation of vehicle ownership among consumers, experts say, a shift that is forcing auto companies to make concessions to their drivers. Some of those concessions — such as providing roundthe-clock, concierge-style maintenance — look a lot like Yoshi.
“Convenience is becoming a lifestyle,” said Alistair Weaver, editor in chief at the automotive website Edmunds.com.
Cities remain clogged with cars, but gas stations are becoming harder to find. Between 1994 and 2015, the number of retail fueling sites in the United States dropped about 25 percent — from 202,800 to about 150,000, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores.
To sweeten the deal for customers, Yoshi has begun offering customers other gas station staples, such as oil changes, tire checks, car washings and brake pad replacements. Using the company’s app customers interact with field technicians and an artificial intelligence bot named “Rachel,” which helps them schedule services.
Field technicians service most vehicles during the workday, in parking lots and driveways, and communicate with customers via smartphone. They carry a tool that allows them to open fuel tank flaps even when they’re locked.
“Every time a field technician fills up a vehicle, we have them take pictures so you know if there’s a dent in your bumper or a scratch on the vehicle,” Yoshi co-founder Bryan Frist said.
“If we notice your passenger side wiper blade is broken, then you’d get an email and a push notification on your phone, and with one button, you could schedule to get it replaced.”