THUNDER BAY – Uride has rolled out a new pet-friendly service, thanks to a chance encounter with a local dog owner.
Cody Ruberto, Uride CEO, told Newswatch he was chatting with a person named Nathan on a flight back to the city, who said that he was a frequent user of the service. However, he said, one problem Nathan has is that 75 per cent of his trips get cancelled when he informs the Uride driver he is bringing his dog.
“I just thought: 'this is crazy.' I basically told him on the plane that we're going to solve this issue. And then that's what we did," Ruberto said. "It just came from a conversation here and then trying to fix the problem for Nathan and then everybody else that has a pet. We are so sorry it took us this long to solve.”
He said as soon as the plane landed, he got on the phone with his team and started working on implementing a new category for riders to click a button indicating that they are looking for a pet-friendly driver.
Ruberto said there will be a $5 charge for the service, but this way, drivers “can get paid a little bit extra,” and passengers “can get a more reliable service.”
“When you open up your app, if you scroll up, you'll see pets. And you just select that whenever you're travelling with your dog, or you might have a cat or another animal. Just select that category, book, and then you're going to get matched with a driver who is pet friendly, accepts pets in their car. And then hopefully you never have a cancellation for that ever again, because that's a problem that shouldn't exist,” Ruberto said.
He also said that it will be up to the driver if they would like the pet to travel in a carrier, sit on the passenger's lap, or in the back of an SUV.
“We're incredibly grateful to everyone who's been part of building this company and helping us on this mission to prevent impaired driving in smaller communities and around the world. Hopefully, this new category helps a lot of people,” Ruberto said.
Uride was founded by Ruberto in Thunder Bay. He said Uride now operates in 24 cities across Canada and Mexico, with active expansion underway in Germany and Poland.
