XtraVan by Courier Systems. Software for courier and despatch companies to advertise their empty vans - History.

The history of XtraVan (or as it started life - LinkLoad). If you're interested...

Back in the dim and distant past, somewhere around the mid to late eighties if my memory serves me correctly; I was introduced to Simon Bliss of Concord Couriers. Simon was launching what is now the NCA, and as I had been tramping the country flogging Controller, he felt my contact list would be useful, naturally I obliged!

One of Simon's many ideas was to introduce some sort of load/vehicle sharing system, whereby members could swap empty vehicles and offer jobs to each other, thus the bureau was born. Run by Simon's Brother-in-law, Peter Anderson (now Brooklands Express), out of a corner of Concord's despatch office in Teddington, it soon took off. Peter spent many hours on the 'phone 'chasing up business' trying to get suspicious members to share jobs and generally get thing off the ground.

During one of my visits to see Simon, I stood watching Peter calling around, and quickly came to the decision that the whole operation could be computerised. LinkLoad was born! I think, if I'm not mistaken, it has the distinction of being the UK's first computerised load/vehicle sharing service. The whole system ran on a couple of PC's and a modem (pre-internet) in my loft for ages until eventually the enthusiasm of the users waned and the system was abandoned. My last contact with LinkLoad was when I gave it to the NCA with my blessings to see if they could get it off the ground again, I lost track of it then. Since then things have moved on, we have MTVan, CourierExchange plus a whole raft of other public and private subscription based systems.

Nigel Thomas
Courier Systems