ReadyFill Pty Ltd

ReadyFill is Australia's largest marketplace for fill: the dirt, soil, sand, clay and rock dug up on construction sites. It connects people who have spare fill with nearby sites that need it, so material gets reused instead of being trucked to landfill.

Every excavation produces soil that has to go somewhere. Tipping it is expensive and gets dearer every year, while landowners, farmers, builders and developers who need fill often pay for material that's being thrown away just down the road. Until now the two sides have relied on phone calls and Facebook posts to find each other.

ReadyFill puts every job on one map. A contractor with material to move posts a Have Fill job, saying what it is, how much, where and when. A site that needs material posts a Need Fill job. ReadyFill matches them by distance and material type, sends a push notification the moment a match is posted, and both sides call or message each other in the app to agree the job directly. Contractors avoid tipping costs and drive shorter distances, and receiving sites get material for free. ReadyFill is free to join, on iPhone, Android and the web, with a supplier portal for businesses that move material regularly.

In its first 14 months, with a two-person team and very little capital, ReadyFill has grown to about 4,800+ accounts nationwide, including more than 1,100 businesses. More than 6,500+ jobs have been posted, and tip sites have listed about 2.5 million cubic metres of receiving capacity across Australia. ReadyFill earns money through paid tools on top of the free network: memberships for regular operators, single-job fees for occasional users, a paid directory for quarries and landscape supply yards, and a contractor leads service. Every job also adds to a growing picture of where fill is generated and where it's needed, a dataset the industry has never had.

ReadyFill was founded by Thomas Martin, a former operations manager for a civil construction company, where he was responsible for directing the material imported to and exported from its sites. He also has a background in warehousing management and ran his own business. He is joined by Emmett, a former concreter turned estimator who faced the same problem every day from the pricing side: finding fill and tip solutions for jobs. Between them they have lived both sides of the problem ReadyFill solves