EBay Is Launching A Same-Day Shipping Service Called eBay Now

A local eBay could start to challenge Craigstlist. I bet they could figure out how to map stuff too.

I'm still not sure how this is economically viable. At the IRS rate of $0.55/mile and the average messenger pay of $12/hour, about four or more deliveries per hour would be needed to break even just for the hour. Add traffic and downtime for when the messenger has no deliveries and it doesn't seem possible.<p>For comparison, in Chicago a company called Dining-in has similar constraints -- delivering within about an hour a custom order. They charge $6.99 -- excluding the tip.

If it only supports local stores, and has nothing to do with auctions, then how is it any different than TaskRabbit?

There is a way for doing same day, or even same hour shipping everywhere. Combine pre-ordering with gps.<p>A website where people can express they want to purchase something at a certain maximum delivery charge. As soon as enough people want to purchase things in a certain geographic area (based on a calculation of delivery route), they service kicks in - someone picks out all the goods (this would most likely be a grocery store) and then drives and delivers it on that route.