Big and bulky delivery apps: the 2026 driver guide

What is big-and-bulky gig delivery?

It's the layer of the gig economy that moves what won't fit in a Corolla trunk: retail furniture and appliances, building materials, store-to-door same-day items, small moves. The customers are often businesses - Home Depot and Tractor Supply route same-day deliveries through Roadie (a UPS company since 2021), Lowe's big-item orders reach drivers through Bungii's network via OneRail, and Curri exists entirely for construction supply houses. That B2B tilt is why this niche behaves differently from food delivery: fewer, bigger jobs, scheduled routes alongside on-demand offers, and real equipment expectations - straps, blankets, and lifting requirements that commonly run from 50 lbs (Dispatch) to 125 lbs (reported for Bungii), with loading expectations higher still on some platforms.

The market itself is still growing - industry analyst Armstrong & Associates pegs US big-and-bulky last-mile at a projected 7.2% annual growth through 2026, down from 11.4% in the 2017-2024 run - but consolidating: UPS owns Roadie, IKEA's Taskrabbit absorbed Dolly, and retail work increasingly flows through aggregators. For drivers that means the opportunity is real, and the platforms' requirements and pay models are worth reading closely before you commit a vehicle to them.

Which big-item delivery apps should you drive for?

Requirements from each platform's official driver pages, checked July 2026; all eight run background checks. Rules vary by market and change - verify at signup. Bungii specifics are the platform's published figures as relayed by its app listing and driver-review coverage; its site blocks automated checks.

Three practical patterns in that table. First, you can start with the car in your driveway: Roadie takes any vehicle and Curri explicitly welcomes sedans, so the niche has an on-ramp that doesn't require buying a truck. Second, the truck apps gate harder: higher ages (Frayt and Bungii at 21, Dispatch at 23), vehicle-year cutoffs, equipment lists, and lift tests - this is closer to light freight than to dropping off burritos.

Third, availability is not universal: Roadie covers all 50 states, but Curri runs an explicit waitlist, Frayt recruits market by market, and Dispatch operates in select regions - apply before you plan your week around any of them. Once you're running more than one app, the platform guides and our Roadie driver guide cover the per-app details.

How much do big-item delivery drivers actually make?

Here's where this guide has to be direct: almost every pay number in this niche is a marketing claim. The platforms publish ceilings ("up to") or unaudited averages, and only one platform has independent measured data. Both kinds of numbers are below - labeled honestly.

All figures from official platform driver pages and app listings, July 2026. "Up to" means the top of the range, not what a typical driver earns.

Against that, the one measured dataset: Gridwise telemetry from 6,725 Roadie drivers across 2025 shows a median of $12.70 per hour and $1.58 per mile, a median payout of $9.60 per delivery, and the top 10% at $20.49/hour. The median tip: one cent - unlike food delivery, tipping barely exists here. The lesson isn't that the claims are lies; it's that the spread is enormous and vehicle class, market, and gig selection decide where you land. The gross-versus-net homework from the main guide applies double in this niche, and the earnings guides cover how to raise your number once you're tracking it.

Does buying a truck for gig work pay off?

The pay ladder is real: GoShare's claimed ceilings run from $46/hour for a sedan to $188/hour for a box truck, and Lugg's averages climb $28 to $47 by class. But the cost ladder climbs with it. AAA's 2025 Your Driving Costs puts a half-ton pickup at 98.5 cents per mile - the most expensive class AAA measures, versus 55.9 cents for a small sedan. Read that number for what it is: the ALL-IN average for a brand-new, financed truck driven 15,000 miles a year, where depreciation and payments do most of the damage (that works out to about $14,800 a year total, not an extra cost on top). Drive a paid-off, older truck and your marginal cost per gig mile is closer to fuel plus upkeep - roughly 31 cents by our math (about 20 cents of gas at 19 MPG and $3.78/gal, plus AAA's ~11 cents of maintenance and tires). And per-mile cost falls the more you drive, because the fixed costs spread: AAA's fleet average drops from $1.00 per mile at 10,000 miles a year to 66 cents at 20,000. A 2025 F-150 carries an EPA rating of just 19-23 MPG combined. (AAA publishes no cargo-van figure, and full-size cargo vans are exempt from EPA ratings entirely, so van owners have to compute their own cost per mile - which is exactly what a fill-up log is for.)

Put revenue and cost together and the honest picture appears. Take Roadie's measured $1.58 per mile of revenue. In a new, financed half-ton at AAA's all-in 98.5 cents, roughly 60 cents a mile survives as margin; in a paid-off older truck at a ~31-cent marginal cost, about $1.27 does - a fourfold difference in take-home from the same gig, before self-employment tax and before the empty miles. That's our arithmetic, not a study, and your numbers will land somewhere between - but the spread is the point. Deadhead is the silent killer in this niche: a long-haul drop means driving home empty, and every one of those miles carries the same 98.5-cent cost with zero revenue. A gig that grossed $1.60 a mile one-way grossed $0.80 round-trip. Whether it was worth taking is a question only your own per-mile log can answer.

What insurance do big-item delivery drivers need?

This is the section that saves someone's savings account. The Insurance Information Institute is unambiguous: personal auto policies will not provide coverage when you use your car for commercial purposes, and it names delivering goods and operating a delivery service as exactly that. Hauling paid freight is squarely in scope. The platforms know it, and their requirements vary widely:

• Frayt requires state-minimum liability for cars and vans - but box trucks need $1,000,000 in auto liability plus $100,000 in cargo coverage, real commercial policy territory.
• Dispatch asks for car insurance "ideally commercial" and is the only one of the eight that provides occupational accident coverage for delivery-related injuries.
• GoShare provides supplemental cargo insurance, but its own pages are clear that if you damage a customer's item or property, you're responsible.
• Roadie requires personal coverage that's valid for gig work and notes on its own signup pages that "many drivers carry commercial insurance to protect themselves against liability."
• Lugg tells applicants directly to check with their insurer because not all personal policies cover commercial use.

The practical move: call your insurer, describe exactly what you'll haul and for whom, and price a commercial or business-use policy before your first gig - then put that premium into your cost-per-mile math, because it's as real as gas. If the premium kills the margin, better to learn that on paper than after a denied claim.

What do big miles mean at tax time?

Everything from the main guide's tax section applies here - self-employment tax, quarterly estimates, and the 2026 reporting thresholds that mean many drivers get no 1099 at all. But two things hit harder in this niche:

• The mileage deduction is worth more to you than to anyone else in the gig economy. At 72.5-76 cents per business mile (the rate rose to 76¢ on July 1, 2026), a driver logging 2,000 miles a month of gigs and deadhead is building an $18,240 annual deduction - and in a vehicle that genuinely costs close to that to run, the deduction is compensating for real cost, not padding. The catch: IRS Publication 463 expects a contemporaneous log. Miss the miles, lose the money.
• Log the empty legs. The return trip from a long-haul drop is your real cost and, when you're working, generally part of your business mileage - track the full round trip and let your tax professional draw the fine lines. A log that only shows loaded miles understates both your costs and your deduction. The mileage guides cover what counts.

As always: planning estimates, not tax advice.

Before your first gig

1. Call your insurer first. Describe the work; price business-use or commercial coverage. Add the premium to your cost-per-mile before judging any platform's pay.
2. Apply with the vehicle you own. Roadie and Curri take sedans; the truck decision should come after two weeks of data, not before your first gig. Mind the waitlists (Curri) and market limits (Frayt, Dispatch) - apply to several.
3. Buy the kit before it's mandatory: ratchet straps, moving blankets, a tarp, and a hand truck cover the equipment lists at Lugg, Bungii, and RoadieXD - and they're deductible business expenses.
4. Track from mile one, including deadhead. Auto-detection catches the empty legs you'd never log by hand, and in this niche the empty legs are the difference between real and imagined profit.
5. Log every payout per platform - gross, hours, and the miles the gig really took, round trip. Rank platforms by net per hour after two weeks and drop the bottom of your list.
6. Set aside 25-30% of net for taxes and note the quarterly deadlines - big payouts make for big April surprises.

Common questions