Casual courier companies already exist. Employees are paid daily, piecework. They drive their own cars and pay their own fuel. They just pick up parcels at the start of the day and deliver them as best they can. This already exists, so whatever objections you have must have already been surmounted.

> This already exists, so whatever objections you have must have already been surmounted.

There's a huge difference between some fly-by-night operations working in this model already existing and a company the size of Wal-Mart taking it on.

Additionally there's a huge difference between a person coming in daily as a contract employee and a company like Wal-Mart recruiting its customers at the checkout.

The difference is lawsuits and liability when something bad happens. If it's a small company there's not so much assets to go after. If it's Wal-Mart the ambulance chasers will come out of the woodwork.

Wal-Mart is big enough that they can take those thefts as a loss.

I see it working. If done right, it could leverage into neighborliness. It should be marketed that way. I can see people doing it just to have an excuse to meet their neighbors.

You misunderstand the problem. It's not the loss of the $20 of goods or whatever that are lost. Obviously they can absorb that.

It's the lawsuits due to the emotional/physical trauma of being robbed while delivering for Wal-Mart.

There's that, but I'm sure they'd have lawyers work out some sort of indemnification. The first media reports would need careful PR handling.

I see this as something similar to what AirBnB went through. It's not unprecedented.

AirBnB is miniscule compared to Wal-Mart, though. Not even a blip.

The ambulance chasers would be all over this.

Not to mention widespread fraud. It's just a dumb idea.