Honest Days Wage for an Honest Days Work

My name is Joseph Young. I grew up in a small town in the UK and joined the British Army at a young age of 15 and three quarters back in 1989.

I remained in the military for some years , stationed in different countries and in particular spending a large chunk of my adult life living in Germany after being stationed there and remaining after leaving the Army.

Thereafter I worked in all sorts of Jobs, even DJing, night porter Jobs etc. Anything really to pay t he bills. I returned to the UK some years later and started delivering goods as a multidrop driver by day and delivering take out food by night; again anything to pay the bills.

I had a serious vehicle accident whilst delivering goods and couldn't return to a physical job, so I decided to go to University at the grand age of 40 by that time I was wheelchair bound.

These were probably the darkest years of my life being wheelchair bound, struggling to feed my family, when I had previously been so active. I cant recall how many different prescription drugs I was taking at the time for pain management, but it was a lot and that increased as time went on being prescribed anther drug and then another to combat the side effects of each additional drug.

I was pretty hooked on prescription drugs by that time and really didn't have the mental capacity to understand what was real pain and what was just the addiction.

One day and I know it sounds cliché , I woke up and made a life changing decision to simply stop every drug I was taking . It was beyond a struggle, I really struggle to put into words how much my body urged me to continue taking the prescription medication. 7 days of sweating with mood swings etc and I was, what I thought was over it ; but you know its just not simple and I struggled for months after whenever I felt a little pain not reverting back to the prescription drugs

After some years of Uni ,I graduated with a BSC in Web development and a separate degree in software development with distinction . I was out of my wheel chair and walking pretty well again - all in all on reflection its clear to me that the prescription drugs although helping with the pain initially , really held me back and I think if I didn't have the light bulb moment I would still be in that chair today.

A few months later I started working for a tech company who were involved in email filtering. Some time after the company was acquired by a Canadian company I switched and started working in call centers as a customer service advisor , again anything to pay the bills and feed the kids.

I worked my way up , became a Team Manager in a call center and was head hunted by a start up Tech company in Plymouth in the UK. I started there as an Operations Manager but most definitely kept in-touch with my tech background. I worked my way up again through the ranks after years of what seems on reflection endless hours of late nights, working all of the hours you can imagine as is the norm with startups.

Throughout all of this time whilst working in any job; I always remained confident that some day, I would use the skills I had learnt in university, coupled with my diverse, physical work experience in the transport industry to create a fairer online environments for delivery drivers .

Some months ago the company I worked for went through redundancies and although a distressing time, I decided to start developing my own ideas after leaving.

In the UK we have a few closed Transport networks such as Courier Exchange and The Delivery App amongst others. Each of these platforms either charge drivers a substantial annual subscription fee for access or take a quite significant cut of what the customer pays as commission in some cases, drivers just never see the real amount of money that customers actually pay.

I've come up with a much better solution and although the Website has not yet been released as I'm in the final steps of development , the potential to bring some integrity back into this online space is quite simply disruptive and close.

My goal is to create two Websites which are very close to public release currently; one site will be called "The Logistics Exchange" (I have the Domain) the other is Connect with a Man and Van. The former is being released to disrupt the multi-million pound market monopoly of existing closed Logistics Exchanges - Just 10% of the existing traffic going to those existing networks would equate to over 3 Million in revenue each year.; so the knock on effect on release is that drivers and transport providers will see much more of the physical money being paid directly to them. Ultimately you are the ones doing the work.

The latter is directed at the general public and providing a post a load and driver bidding platform to ensure customers get the best bang for there buck and drivers maximize their empty van capacity. Both are completely subscription free and to avoid driver payment issues ; every customer will pay the service providers , fleets drivers directly so you can be sure you get 100% of the fee, every time .

They are not comparison sites or marketplace sites; they are simple referral sites where a load is posted and bids can be placed, None of the customers moving fee is taken by the site and none of the drivers moving fee is taken, as every customer pays you directly.

Drivers starting out won’t be crippled by large subscription fees so you can simply startup without the risk.

Drivers who sign up to one of the Websites have automatic access to both Connect with a Man and Van for the public and the logistics exchange for transport providers etc .

I'm now a great PHP programmer with a lot of experience in backend Webserver management , database management, Web-design - so everything is from scratch and I'm really proud of it - Im positive it will make a massive impact on the industry and get some money back in the pockets of those that deserve it. (Drivers - Transport Providers, Freight Forwarders).

If your feed up with paying through the nose subscription fees and losing a chunk of the customer fee in commission , or just fed up, of the monopoly ; then support me on my quest to get this over the line .

Why am I here ? - well I need help to raise some money to get me through the final 2 months of development as my redundancy pay is over and the money will be used for hardware and software infrastructure costs .

Please help and bring a little integrity back into this online space; ensuring that the old saying , "A honest Days Wage for an Honest Days Work" still means something