Your spot on with what I've been wrestling with over the past months. It's difficult, but possible. I did a trial with a friend in Houston and it worked out well. We made a little over $200 in a day on one laptop. Communication wise, it's definitely labor intensive at first as I'm trying to make wise decisions over the phone and looking at pictures.
It is possible to pull it off, it's just going to take a lot of work finding the right detail oriented/trustworthy person in another city that's in the right situation to pull it off. Hopefully in a year I'm writing about how I was able to scale it to multiple cities.
Could you hire people on www.taskrabbit.com to go pick things up for you? You'd have to probably pay them on retainer to get the responsiveness you need, but it's a way to recruit in different cities.
It is possible to pull it off, it's just going to take a lot of work finding the right detail oriented/trustworthy person in another city that's in the right situation to pull it off. Hopefully in a year I'm writing about how I was able to scale it to multiple cities.
Thanks for the note!