Get it over here, right now… please!

So imagine this, if you can…

I’ve bought three metres of waterproof canvas with which to sew a cover for our rowboat. I’ve laid it all out and sewn together panels of canvas, French-seaming them for extra strength. I’m sitting at the cottage; it’s a sunny, cheerful day. I’m an hour by boat from anywhere. And I discover I don’t have enough canvas. It’s my last weekend to work on the boat cover before people come to rent our cottage and I’d like to get the boat off the back deck and back in the water and covered.

… not critical stuff, but the push was on. And it was Saturday morning. I made a call to Barrie and yippee! the canvas place was open and yes, they’d cut off three more metres and put it on my charge card.

I’m up north and have friends leaving Barrie in 20 minutes to come to our same area. If I can just locate one of my kids to drive to the south end, pick up canvas and drive it to the east end to our friends’ house.

Can’t find a soul.

And so, the rowboat cover gets tucked into a closet to wait for a month when I’m back up north with my new supply of canvas.

I should have called Diane Riley.

Diane owns Errands to Go and she’ll pick up and deliver anything. Except people. Her delivery licence doesn’t include human beings, but anything else is a go.

Diane’s van is whipping around all over Barrie, delivering parts for vehicle repair shops; getting a Sunday paper and a coffee for another client; dropping off flowers for a florist; filling a grocery list and dropping it at a home for another. In short, Diane can handle any urgent or regular pick up and delivery request and she does it with pleasantness and efficiency.

A few weeks ago we were just completing the printing of both paper copies and CD copies of the annual report for the Self Employment Assistance Program. It’s an ambitious publishing job with French and English versions, in paper, CD and web formats, all launched simultaneously. The CD’s took longer to press than we had planned and we were down to the wire with scheduled media drops and everyone working feverishly to meet our deadline.

Guess what? It was Diane Riley and Errands to Go that zipped down to inner Toronto to pick up the CDs and get them back to Barrie so the team could insert them in the back of the annual reports and get them on the street on schedule.

Diane picks up from print shops, from restaurants, from marinas, from law firms, from court houses. She saves time and money, especially for sole proprietors who can’t take time away from their businesses and yet have time sensitive demands.

In Diane’s former life as an employee, she dealt with business demands that included lots of coordination. But today, as a self employed person, she’s juggling constantly. It’s what she loves best. With her cell phone at her side, she takes online orders, phone orders, and responds with immediacy.

What a neat service!

Thanks, Diane.