Delivery apps for cargo van owners — the honest picture

Checked October 2026

The short answer: delivery apps hand you one job at a time, pay per job, and show the same job to every driver in the city at the same moment. They are good for filling gaps and learning your city. They are a weak foundation, because the work goes to whoever taps first, not to whoever drives best. Use apps as the second layer of your week, on top of companies that know your name.

The main apps, plainly

FRAYT matches drivers with business and retail freight, from cars up to cargo vans and sprinter vans. Drivers are paid per job, and the app advertises payment within about 48 hours. Driver reviews tell the other half of the story: jobs in busy cities can vanish before you open the notification, and one driver reports being charged about $40 for a background check before earning anything. Read the reviews for your own city before you count on it.

Curri is built around construction and trade materials — lumber, pipe, parts — delivered to job sites. It pays per job, with bigger vehicles earning more per run. Drivers report solid payouts when work is available and long quiet stretches when it is not, which is the shape of all app work.

Dropoff runs same-day business deliveries, with a strong medical and pharmacy side. It works in a set of cities rather than everywhere, and much of its steadier work runs as scheduled routes for business accounts.

GoShare leans toward bigger items — furniture, store deliveries, and loads where a cargo van or sprinter van earns its keep. Pay is per job and the vehicle class sets the tier.

Roadie, owned by UPS, posts per-gig deliveries including long-distance runs. A long gig can pay real money, and it can also strand you far from home with no way back loaded — read the return trip before you tap accept.

What drivers learn the hard way

Three lessons show up in driver reviews of every app. First, speed beats everything: the good jobs are gone in seconds, so app income rewards the driver who stares at a phone. Second, the stated pay is gross: the drive to the pickup, the waiting at the dock, and the drive home all come out of it. One app's own driver agreement starts paying waiting time only after a set number of minutes, and only part of the fee reaches the driver. Third, an app can change its pay or its rules any week, and your rating and history there buy you nothing outside it.

Where apps fit

A working driver's week usually layers like this: routes and regular companies at the base, because they call you; apps on top, to fill the holes. The base is what makes the month.