Tristan Dreisbach, research analyst at the USPS Office of Inspector General, discusses recent USPS OIG on the suitability of electric vehicles for last mile postal delivery. We discuss:

• Three major benefits of adopting electric delivery vehicles, including environmental and cost benefits
• Total cost of ownership of electric vehicles
• Suitability of electric delivery vehicles for last mile postal delivery
• Range, climate, terrain, and the ability of current electric delivery vehicles to cover existing USPS delivery routes
• Stop-start and range
• Charging infrastructure - including different kinds of chargers, costs and impact on the local power grid
• Up-front costs of electric vehicles and ongoing costs, including maintenance
• Different modelling of total cost of ownership comparisons between electric and internal combustion engine powered delivery vehicles

Costa Koulis, co-CEO at Designerex, explains how delivery plays a key role in enabling the peer-to-peer rental marketplace:

• How the peer-to-peer designer dress marketplace works
• How delivery plays a key role in enabling the dress sharing marketplace
• Why the majority send dresses via Express Post (Australia Post’s nationwide express delivery service)
• Enabling resale of designer clothing
• Comparisons with the likes of Rent The Runway
• Working with Australia Post to create its first automated shipping platform for marketplaces
• Returning dresses via the post - including labelling solutions
• Demand for same-day 3-hour delivery
• Keeping clothes out of landfill or furnaces
• Circular economy principles and the fashion rental model
• Why renting requires different logistics tools to resale
• Comparing environmental impact of renting vs resale

John Callan, CEO at Ursa Major Associates, joins me to talk about the US Postal Service as well as the state of the US letters and parcels markets. We cover:

• Key takeaways from the Postal Reform Act, including impact on delivery as well as headline financial impacts
• The new vehicle contract… and electric vehicles!
• Volatility of fuel prices
• US parcel volume trends
• Bringing fulfilment centres closer to the consumer, and issues with 3PLs throttling volumes
• Carrier consolidation via mergers and acquisitions
• Consumers demanding greater visibility of their deliveries
• Are we applying “pizza delivery” standards to products that don’t need to be delivered so fast?
• Microfulfilments centres and dark stores
• Developments with the USPS Parcel Select service, and FedEx and Amazon trying to shift volumes to their own networks
• Amazon pumping parcel volumes into its DSP network
• USPS losing the personal connection with residents - cluster box delivery
• Letter volume trends
• Delivery standards
• Parcel lockers in the USA - can carrier-neutral lockers work in the USA?
• Why the USPS’s own parcel locker network failed

Roel Gevaers PhD, Professor in Last Mile Logistics and Supply Chain, University of Antwerp, joins me to talk about the intersection of logistics and e-commerce. We cover:

• Amazon building its delivery capabilities in Belgium
• Strategic decision-making behind Amazon selecting sites for new delivery stations
• bol.com’s position as leader in the Belgian e-commerce market
• Last mile partnerships for bol.com, including acquisition of Cycloon
• E-commerce companies doing their own deliveries
• Positioning delivery stations for bike courier and cargo bike couriers
• Comparing bol.com with Amazon, including product range, fulfilment, subscription (i.e. Prime), and multi-lingual websites
• Speed of delivery in Belgium, including next-day and same-day
• How Amazon enters new markets
• Amazon delivery modes in Belgium - residential vs out-of-home
• Green delivery, including bpost’s Ecozone project
• Restrictions on warehouse and fulfilment centre overnight operations
• Cross-border fulfilment from neighbouring countries
• Last mile as being an enabler for better customer experience and achieving green goals
• Trends to in-source delivery activities

 

Fraser MacLean, Managing Director at M&H Carriers, joins me to talk about remote delivery, operating an electric delivery fleet, two-person delivery, and what it's like running a regional carrier. We cover:

• Fraser's career path
• Delivering everything from B2C parcels through to pallets and freight
• Partnerships with DPD, DX, and Pallet Track, and various retailers
• Same-day delivery
• Delivering to remote areas, including islands
• Unattended delivery and delivery via local partners
• Growth in e-commerce since the onset of the pandemic, even in remote areas
• Real-life learnings from operating electric delivery vehicles
• Updating depot infrastructure to charge EVs
• Two-person delivery and its growth potential - including value-added services
• Delivering parcels to remote areas - and rural/remote delivery surcharges
• Delivery density and last mile costs
• Rural and remote customers' reliance on e-commerce

 

Heleen Buldeo Rai, Postdoctoral researcher at the Logistics City Chair (University Gustave Eiffel, Paris), joins me to talk about the environmental impact of e-commerce delivery:

• Should people shop online or in person?
• How do people make their shopping trips - by car, on foot, or by other means?
• The concept of substitution
• Does an online purchase replace an in-store purchase?
• Click-and-collect
• Browsing and showrooming
• Omnichannel behaviour
• Fragmentation
• Is e-commerce fuelling consumerism?
• What do we do with the time we save by shopping online?
• Customers' overall mobility footprint
• Trip chaining
• Click-and-collect vs PUDO
• Out-of-home delivery in rural and remote areas
• Factors driving consumer choice in delivery options
• Encouraging consumers to make greener delivery choices
• Convenience vs sustainability
• Getting the data on mobility
• The 15-minute city, and what it means for e-commerce delivery
• Transport of heavy goods

 

Brody Buhler, CEO at Escher Group, joins me to talk about creating high-performing postal and delivery companies, including:

• Posts using real-time data and analytics
• Taking friction out of postal transactions
• Leveraging local knowledge, for example address data
• Using data to optimise inventory, delivery timeframes, and understand the customer
• Trapped value in the last mile and the middle mile
• Automation to play a greater role in the last mile
• Managing e-commerce returns, and the end of the "one size fits all" returns policy
• Using automation to strip out cost and increase capacity
• Trends in cross-border delivery
• Using OCR and automation capabilities for inbound international parcels
• The role of mobile in the modern postal network
• Making international shipments at the post office counter more efficient
• Freeing counter staff for higher value transactions
• Post offices playing a role in the broader delivery strategy
• Reducing costly failed first-time deliveries
• Anticipatory delivery - anticipating the delivery recipient's preferences
• Shifting focus to gather preference data for recipients and post office customers

Austin Reynolds, Manager Market Intelligence at the International Post Corporation (IPC), discusses some of the key findings of the IPC 2021 Global Postal Industry Report, including: - Geographic spread of the postal operators surveyed for the report - Posts' performance during the pandemic - Growth in industry revenue, driven by parcel revenue growth despite shrinking letter revenue - Impact on letter volumes - and what has accelerated the decline in mail volume - Volume trends in different letter segments, such as advertising mail, and international mail - Operational changes in response to falling letter volumes - Postal operators diversifying their businesses, including via acquisitions - Evolution of parcel volumes during the pandemic - Postal operators increasing parcel processing capacity - Increasing competition, local, regional, and global (including e-commerce retailers moving into the last mile) - Financial performance, and factors influencing financial results - and common factors across the best-performing posts

Angela Hultberg discusses the recent COP26 event and what it means for the delivery and transport sectors:

• Angela’s work as road transport lead for the Climate Champions in the lead-up to COP26 during 2021
• Announcements from COP26:
  • Signing of the Zero Emission Vehicle Declaration
  • Global MoU for Heavy Vehicles
• Signatories to the declarations, including vehicle manufacturers
• Making decarbonisation a global conversation
• Deadlines for phasing out the internal combustion engine
• Alternatives to the internal combustion engine - is it all about electrification?
• The gap between leaders and laggards in decarbonising delivery
• Growing public interest in sustainability in delivery
• Reducing emissions while parcel volumes are growing
• E-commerce’s emphasis on speed and what that means for decarbonising transport - could slower delivery be cheaper and reduce emissions?
• Free returns, the fashion industry, and the planet
• At checkout displaying emissions associated with delivery options
• The special environmental challenge for the postal sector

Anna Möller Boivie, Managing Director (Stockholm) at Copenhagen Economics, discusses proposals to change the EU Postal Service Directive:

• Who and what are covered by the Postal Services Directive
• Parcels are part of the USO (universal service obligation) in some markets
• Competition in the parcels sector - including domestic and cross-border
• Should parcels be regulated?
• Why the EC has a special interest in cross-border delivery in the European Union
• Publishing wholesale parcel pricing
• Regulation covering all carriers (of a certain size) - not just postal operators
• Amazon getting caught in the definition of a postal operator - and therefore being subject to regulation
• Standardising regulation and postal market definitions - including widening definition to include other operators such as Amazon
• Bottlenecks and market failures
• Next steps for the Postal Services Directive
• Environmental issues and the Postal Services Directive
• Letter delivery frequency and speed