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Miscellaneous

by Mike Masnick

Fri, Sep 15th 2000 2:28am





Delivering the Goods

from the the-biggest-problem dept

It turns out that one of the biggest problems facing all these new economy dot com e-commerce companies is how to actually deliver goods efficiently (and cost effectively). While everyone was so excited about all the benefits that the web provided them as a retailer, they seemed to ignore the other side of the equation: costs. It's nice to have a centralized warehouse, but that makes it more costly to deliver the goods. While UPS, Fedex and the US Postal Service fight it out for delivery services in the US, perhaps there's a better model. The article suggests figuring out a way to piggyback certain deliveries, to bring down the costs. It's definitely an interesting idea.

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  1.  
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    Lindsay, Sep 15th, 2000 @ 3:14am

    Delivery

    It's even worse than you suggest. In the unlikely event that a large proportion of the population starts using e-commerce and expecting things to get delivered, you are going to see the streets filling with vans in the early evening because nobody is in during the day to take delivery of the goods. The traffic congestion will be intense - one delivery lorry in our street can cause havoc. And, no, I don't believe that all the companies co-ordinate their activities to avoid this.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
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    mhh5, Sep 15th, 2000 @ 11:10pm

    Just combine...

    Taxis with UPS and your cell phone. Call for a cab and have your orders delivered at the same time! Talk about convergence...

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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