Amazon to challenge postmen with parcel deliveries on foot

[TrueBlueTerrier]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/amazon-chall ... 8T2FXR7Azr

Amazon is taking on the traditional postman by delivering parcels on foot.

Couriers will ditch their vehicles and carry packages on a handcart in a pilot programme in the London boroughs of Hackney, Westminster and Islington.

The new service, which is part of a wider effort to cut carbon emissions from Amazon’s fleet of delivery vans, means staff will cross paths with postal workers employed by the 509-year-old Royal Mail.


Nicola Fyfe, of Amazon Logistics, said the business would consider expanding its on-foot deliveries to other UK cities if it proved a success.

She said: “When you look at the on-foot walker deliveries, and couple them up with our electric bike deliveries and our electric vans – the three of them working together – really helps bring a sustainable delivery solution.”

These three forms of zero-emission delivery now cover 70pc of London’s Congestion Charge zone, Amazon said. Ms Fyfe said it also helped when planning deliveries in pedestrianised zones and low-traffic networks.

Amazon has also expanded its deliveries by electric cargo bike to Belfast and Norwich, joining London, Manchester and Glasgow. The technology giant has said it is investing £300m in cutting emissions from its UK delivery operations.

As part of this, Amazon said it would start transporting more packages by rail in Britain, beginning with the fully-electric West Coast Main Line between Scotland and the Midlands.

Products will be unloaded from train carriages and sorted at local delivery centres. Royal Mail ended its “night mail” train service last year.

The company also confirmed its largest ever order of electric HGVs on Tuesday, which will include 140 electric Mercedes Benz haulers and eight Volvo trucks. Its trucks will have a range of 310 miles on a full charge.

The vehicles will expand Amazon’s fleet of green trucks to around 160. The order of electric trucks is a record for any company in the UK.

Amazon said it expected the green transport to carry 300m packages each year once it is operational.

It will also install fast-chargers at key points in its logistic network that can boost the batteries of its trucks from 20pc to 80pc in an hour.

The company’s launch of on-foot deliveries in the UK follows similar trials in New York and Paris, where it has used people-power to avoid congestion and meet demands for next day and same day deliveries from customers.

While it is a customer of the postal service, Amazon has a sprawling logistics division for deliveries from its Amazon.com site.

It is also growing its shipping arm, which collects parcels from retailers directly and delivers them to customers, rather than sending them from a central fulfilment centre.

Despite being Britain’s biggest parcel company, Royal Mail has been grappling with a long-term decline in letter deliveries and a growing challenge from companies such as Evri and Amazon in parcels amid soaring demand for online shopping since the pandemic.


Its postmen walk up to 1bn steps every day and half of the Royal Mail’s routes are largely on foot, with two-thirds of packages still delivered by legwork.


Alexander Paterson, an analyst at Peel Hunt, said Royal Mail risked losing business to Amazon.

He said: “Royal Mail has very high fixed costs and low margins even in good years, and is therefore very highly operationally geared.

“If Amazon was to roll out its own delivery service in areas of high population density and high numbers of parcels per address, it would present challenges for Royal Mail.”

Last year, the Government gave the green light to a £3.6bn takeover of Royal Mail by Czech tycoon Daniel Kretinsky.

The postal service is also pushing for an overhaul of its universal service obligation, which requires it to deliver letters six days a week.

Royal Mail is planning to trial a reduced service this year that will see some areas deprived of second-class letter deliveries on Saturdays. Regulator Ofcom is expected to launch a consultation on the proposals in the coming weeks.

[scoobydo79]

What next bicycycles?

[tramssirhc]

Nowt but green washing. The postal industry is carbon intensive.

[Mr Rush]

Nowt but green washing. The postal industry is carbon intensive.

Consumption is carbon intensive.
♫Save the endangered Alaskan Salmon? I want candy! [shipped overnight]♫

As I recall, a few years ago the Co-Op were talking about introducing local bicycle deliveries. I don't think anything came of that.

[funkflex55]

Some co ops have little white robot buggies that do the local deliveries for them. Seems they skipped the human step and gave those jobs to the machines instead. Once AI gets to a certain level then we'll all end up in the matrix. (If we aren't already)

[menditsa]

The Balaclava boi's in Hackney and Islington fully support Amazon foot delivery's

[GRS]

Just shows how f****d up RM’s Senior Management team and Board are.

A):We’re planning on reducing people on the streets & putting them on van deliveries whilst Amazon look to do the opposite


B): We’ve ended the use of rail for carrying mail & putting more on congested slow moving roads whilst Amazon are increasing their use of rail to cut what’s being carried by road.

I know which company’s management I’m backing to be making the right call. This is the problem when you get Board members etc with no experience of the Mail industry. Every call they make and have made over the last X amount of years has been wrong on so many levels. Jeez this last bunch came from the car building industry and have tried to foist that industry’s business practices onto us. Once they found that wasn’t welcomed and embraced they have spent the remainder of their time making decisions that are just designed to be spiteful and piss the entire workforce off.

[WalkerX]

Some co ops have little white robot buggies that do the local deliveries for them. Seems they skipped the human step and gave those jobs to the machines instead. Once AI gets to a certain level then we'll all end up in the matrix. (If we aren't already)

The Co-Op robots were about where I live, then they suddenly disappeared once the novelty wore off.

[datasaint]

Just shows how f****d up RM’s Senior Management team and Board are.

A):We’re planning on reducing people on the streets & putting them on van deliveries whilst Amazon look to do the opposite


B): We’ve ended the use of rail for carrying mail & putting more on congested slow moving roads whilst Amazon are increasing their use of rail to cut what’s being carried by road.

I know which company’s management I’m backing to be making the right call. This is the problem when you get Board members etc with no experience of the Mail industry. Every call they make and have made over the last X amount of years has been wrong on so many levels. Jeez this last bunch came from the car building industry and have tried to foist that industry’s business practices onto us. Once they found that wasn’t welcomed and embraced they have spent the remainder of their time making decisions that are just designed to be spiteful and piss the entire workforce off.

I think it goes deeper than that. The failure of the company was necessary for Kretinsky to buy it.

You are right though the board have no vision.

[Playmail]

We will be back on horse and cart soon to save them penny's

[SpacePhoenix]

Once the sale is complete, I'd imagine that there'll be a new board in place. I wouldn't be surprised if they launch a full review into every aspect of the business in every office. For example they'll probably look at the utilisation of any machines, vehicles and equipment, any they don't think is being used enough will be gone

[posted]

Just shows how f****d up RM’s Senior Management team and Board are.

A):We’re planning on reducing people on the streets & putting them on van deliveries whilst Amazon look to do the opposite


B): We’ve ended the use of rail for carrying mail & putting more on congested slow moving roads whilst Amazon are increasing their use of rail to cut what’s being carried by road.

I know which company’s management I’m backing to be making the right call. This is the problem when you get Board members etc with no experience of the Mail industry. Every call they make and have made over the last X amount of years has been wrong on so many levels. Jeez this last bunch came from the car building industry and have tried to foist that industry’s business practices onto us. Once they found that wasn’t welcomed and embraced they have spent the remainder of their time making decisions that are just designed to be spiteful and piss the entire workforce off.

You seem to think it's a mutually exclusive position to hold. If competitor is increasing something then surely we should increase as well.

RM have lots people on foot deliveries, Amazon have few to none on foot deliveries.
The former is aiming to decrease whilst the latter is aiming to increase.
Doesn't mean it should be all or nothing. Clearly both see that there needs to be a mix of foot and van only so one needs to decrease and the other need to increase to get the right mix for them.

i.e if the right (arbitrary) mix is 50% foot and 50% van then it makes sense we decrease and they increase.

Same with use of trains, or anything else for that matter.

Why do we have to look at what competitors are doing and their direction of travel without looking at what their current/starting position is compared to our in addition to the so many different factors (letters, geographic spread and scale for us being some of them)

[Mr Rush]

Why do we have to look at what competitors are doing and their direction of travel without looking at what their current/starting position is compared to our in addition to the so many different factors (letters, geographic spread and scale for us being some of them)

Tell it to RM who constantly bang on about what our alleged competitors do. When it comes to implementation it borders on cargo cult - Amazon does X, so we do the coconut version of that. God help us if DK gets a hardon for space like Bezos.

[posted]

[quote=posted post_id=<a href="tel:1114354">1114354</a> time=<a href="tel:1736957062">1736957062</a> user_id=90597]Why do we have to look at what competitors are doing and their direction of travel without looking at what their current/starting position is compared to our in addition to the so many different factors (letters, geographic spread and scale for us being some of them)

Tell it to RM who constantly bang on about what our alleged competitors do. When it comes to implementation it borders on cargo cult - Amazon does X, so we do the coconut version of that. God help us if DK gets a hardon for space like Bezos.
[/quote]
It’s fine to imitate what a competitor is doing, as long as it fits your own business. Most of what we’ve introduced was probably being done on the content or elsewhere anyway.
Look at parcel lockers, they’re the norm elsewhere. You have to wait until you think your domestic market is ready to accept this change. Introduce some change too early and the market (public) kicks back

Put it a different way…
I bet there’s an AmazonChat type forum and some user(employee) there has made a comment on a thread with the same article
“Look at us, here we are stepping into 2025 introducing deliveries on foot whereas our largest competitor has been reducing foot deliveries for last few years… and they have letters to deliver too”.