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Airspace, a global leader in time-critical logistics—including organ transport and other urgent shipments—relies on an ever-growing network of independent contractors to deliver on its promises in the U.S. The company has experienced rapid growth since its founding in 2016. But as Airspace scaled, its driver onboarding process began to show strain.
It became clear the onboarding experience for drivers was outdated and inefficient. All communication was email-based, often routed through different contacts, placing undue stress on the operations team and frustrating both drivers and staff.
“Our onboarding experience felt stuck in the 1900s. It lacked visibility for drivers, offered no clear sense of progress, and without automation, forced our team to handle communication manually over email. Airspace needed a solution that could improve the driver experience and speed up internal processes in a cost-effective way."
said Austin Sutliff, Director of Operations at Airspace.
Airspace chose to partner with GigSafe, attracted by the platform’s focused feature set.
“GigSafe was exactly what we needed — clean, simple, and collaborative.”
From the start, GigSafe worked closely with Airspace to build custom features tailored to their needs. These included a universal onboarding link with built-in applicant vetting, referral tracking for incentive campaigns, pre-contract questionnaires for complex forms like W-9s, custom drip campaigns, and secondary onboarding flows for contractors with additional compliance requirements.
“GigSafe helped us automate our manual document routing process across nearly twenty markets, each with its own workflow. It was a big lift.”
Despite being a growing company themselves, GigSafe was responsive and maintained a problem-solving mindset throughout the process. The implementation took about 4–7 weeks, with close daily collaboration ensuring a smooth transition.
“The GigSafe support team never hesitates to dive into problem-solving. Any issues are addressed promptly, and we’ve been really happy with their responsiveness.”
Since moving to GigSafe, Airspace has seen measurable improvements in both cost and efficiency. The company cut its monthly onboarding spend by 50% and freed up roughly 80 hours per week for its team.
“With GigSafe, we don’t need an entire department to manage onboarding. The automation and visibility it provides allow a much leaner team to do the work,”
Many thousands of drivers have signed up to drive with Airspace via GigSafe’s onboarding link. While the number of activated drivers fluctuates based on market needs, the Airspace team feels they've hired higher-caliber drivers.
“GigSafe makes it easier for us to prioritize more qualified drivers with customizable workflows and dashboards,"
The onboarding experience has become more professional and aligned with today’s gig worker expectations, especially in terms of speed.
"Drivers can now complete onboarding and get activated in under four hours, which is a huge improvement from our previous system,”