“Dude, I need a truck!” No, it's not the sequel to the 2000 Ashton Kutcher movie Dude, Where’s My Car? but a tech start-up based in Goleta. The brainchild of lifelong Santa Barbara resident Jacob “Dude” Reitzin, Dude I Need a Truck is a moving company best described as Uber meets U-Haul.
“In the beginning was a dude,” Reitzin said, “but it wasn’t good for the dude to be alone; he needed a truck. So he got a truck, and then the dude realized with this truck he could start helping people.”
Placing an ad on Craigslist in 2014, Reitzin and his then-truck (a Ford F-150) began helping people move things around locally in his spare time. Calls came in along with checks, and Reitzin realized he had a business. Around the same time, rideshare services such as Uber and Lyft started to take off in metropolitan areas, creating a buzz and culture Reitzin thought he could tap into.