wolfchild

Paper boys may not be obsolete but the number of people working as bike couriers are nowhere near of what they used to be....Children delivering newspapers is not the same as a bike messenger delivering packages or other items...Bike messengers are an endangered species and their road to extinction begun with the invention of fax machine and later the internet...Bike courier is not good as a long term employment, most of these jobs were done temporarily by university/college students as a means to make some extra money for their tuition.

CliffordK

I disagree. I think there is some commonality with between parcel delivery and paper delivery.

The paper boy flourished when 9 out of 10 houses on the block got papers.

I'm not sure why a similar method wasn't used for mail. Security concerns? But, those could be overcome, especially today with better tracking methods.

But, the model dies when say 1 out of 10 get the newspapers.

Perhaps there is also a shift away from newspaper companies supporting the kids, and neighbors supporting them. Drivers doing the job for years, and consolidating routes.

tandempower

Amazon could also pay the van driver for bringing the crates to the couriers, and then pay the couriers separately for bringing the packages to the door. Then, customers could also bike/walk to where the crates are delivered and pick them up DIY. Amazon is talking about installing delivery lockers at homes, but they could just as easily install one set of lockers per zip+4 area and customers could choose to pick up their packages themselves or pay an extra dollar for a bike courier to do it for them. Then the question becomes how much you have to pay the van drivers to bring the crates to the lockers.The trick is to combine functions so it doesn't matter if you're making less than minimum wage. E.g. let's say you know you will be going to pick up a package by bike and you are registered as an at-will courier so they can trust you to pick up and deliver other peoples' packages. That means you can go pick up your own package and pick up some more packages for other people and get $1 per package for delivering them during your bike ride home. That way, you've combined your package pickup with a recreational bike ride that also happens to make you a few extra dollars.

In fact, you could even make it a better deal for Amazon by paying people to pickup extra packages for their neighbors by giving them shipping discounts, free shipping deals, etc. Then, whenever someone goes to pick up their own package, they pick up a couple extra and get rewarded with free shipping on future purchases.

tandempower

Yes, which is in part due to increased use of online news and saving of trees. In fact, it's strange that some people still want the news on paper at all, imo.

CliffordK

Lockers might work if they are close enough. E-Mail a one-time pass combination, digital barcode key, or bluetooth key.

I'd often rather just go pick up a package at the post office than being bothered with signature verification.

I doubt relying on neighbors to do common delivery would be practical. It might work for some close friends, but not in general.

tandempower

Or text the pass combination.

Better to go pick it up on your own time than sit around waiting to give a signature when they show up, imo.

That's why I said people would have to register as at-will delivery agents so Amazon can trust them. Basically, you would have to sign up with Amazon to be eligible for free/discounted shipping as a reward and then they would keep track of customer satisfaction with deliveries so your delivery/discount privileges would be revoked if there were any delivery complaints.

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tandempower

It morphed quite logically, actually. Remember the original point was to use bike couriers to reduce the number of delivery vans. That was solved by having the vans pick up parcels in crates already organized by zip+4.

Then the only question becomes how to make the connection between the van's dropoff location and the delivery address. Amazon is planning to have lockers by people's front door, but they could also have a single locker station in each zip+4 area. The most the van driver would have to do then is sort the parcels into the lockers by address, which would go much faster than driving around doing door-to-door delivery.

Then you say people don't want to go pick up their own parcel in their zip+4 area. Ok, for those who don't they can pay an extra $1 to have it delivered by a bike courier. You say that will add extra cost to shipping, but how much less will shipping cost by having the van drivers only shuttle packages to a single dropoff location in each zip+4 area instead of wasting time going door to door? Every van you cut out of the system saves money UNLESS the vans are being sold at $10k for a profit, in which case the more vans they use, the more profit they make from selling the vans. If that's the case, there's not much hope in using efficiency to save money, because they're making extra money by being more inefficient and thus selling more vans.

edit: I found this article that lays out what the business idea behind Amazon's plan: It seems that Mercedes vans are going to be sold and they're trying to find entrepreneurs to buy 20-40 vans, so apparently there's an overstock of these vans and they want to boost their sales numbers and thus sell higher sales to investors. So I'm sure they wouldn't want any bike-couriers or other efficiency tweaks to get in their way of maximizing van sales by billing it as an opportunity for entrepreneurs to buy the vans in fleets.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40590799...r-its-packages

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tandempower

Ok, I figured out how to make the Amazon-Mercedes deal profitable with bike couriers:

The Mercedes Benz Sprinter vans they're selling for $10k have a retail MSRP of $34,000. So what you do is plan out your logistic in terms of how many vans you will need with or without the bike couriers. Then if you can get away with using one van instead of three because you're using, say, five bike couriers; then you take the amount of the subsidy discount (i.e. $23,000) and you pay that subsidy based on how many packages are delivered and not how many vans are sold. That way, the companies are investing in subsidizing deliveries and not van sales. So $23,000X2=$46,000 to split between five cyclists, which comes out to a little under $10,000 each. Remember that the driver is already getting a $23,000 discount on the van.

tandempower

Right, but if the shipping costs are built into the prices, then the prices can be lowered by allowing people to choose whether or not to pay an extra $1 to have it delivered to their door. So instead of paying, say, $20 plus free shipping, you pay $19 and you have the option to have it shipped to your door for $1. Also, Amazon makes more money because they're spending less of the $19 on subsidizing vans for drivers.

The only real loser in the deal would be Mercedes because they don't get to sell as many vans, but then that was the whole point of using bike couriers instead of vans+drivers, wasn't it? I.e. to make the money by and for cycling instead of driving.

CliffordK

I doubt they are truly selling a $30K van for $10K. Although, they may get deep discounts from the manufacturer too.

Having people buy-in both raises capital and forces them to have some stake in the game.

Now, if you drive that van for 10 years and put 300,000 miles on it, they may go ahead and just give it to you for free at the end of the period, or even buy you a new one.

Nonetheless, say one could make one's delivery E-Bike for $2500. that would mean one could buy about 10 to 15 of those E-Bikes for the full cost of one van.

Now, depreciating that $30K van over 10 years, the annual capital cost of the van isn't that much compared to labor, insurance, fuel, repairs, and other expenses. Still, one could get a lot of E-Bikes on the road for the cost of a few vans.

If one could get a delivery density of one delivery per mile. At 20 MPH (assisted), then that is about 3 minutes travel time, plus say 2 minutes for the delivery, or about 5 minute deliveries. That comes up to about 12 deliveries an hour, or about 100 deliveries in 8 hours.

Now, the question is how much they are willing to pay for those deliveries. $1 per delivery would be cheap. $2 per delivery and one could do reasonably well.

I suppose some will depend on the logistics. Can one carry those 100 packages in the cargo bike? How much reloading time?

Also, the powered van won't make that mile in zero time. In an urban setting, the van may only make it at 30 MPH... or 2 minutes travel time + 2 minutes delivery time, or about 4 minutes per package and 15 packages an hour and 120 per day.

So, if the difference is only 20 or 25 packages difference, what about the other expenses. Fuel, insurance, capital costs, etc.

Your biggest difference will likely be in carrying big, heavy, and bulky items. So, the bike might get bogged down with 5 of the 50" big screen TVs, while the van would be able to carry a few more of them. Nonetheless, that last mile delivery charge on the big screen TVs will be significantly higher. $10 to $20? Even if it says "Free Delivery", that delivery cost is being factored into the sales price somewhere. Thus, the bike might deliver 10 big screen TVs in 2 loads for the same amount as delivering 100 small books and trinkets.

The part-time job in a small town might also make a unique model. So, one has a big truck with say a fixed route of 400 miles a day, dropping bike containers in small towns along the way, and then the bike courier would deliver say 25 packages in an hour or two, and earn an extra $50 a day. It could well be beneficial to everyone.

Let's see, if a bike container was 3 1/2 feet wide, 4 feet tall, and 5 feet long, then a 40' truck should be able to pack in about 32 containers and service 30+ small towns in a day. Just have to make sure everything runs quickly and smoothly.

Mobile 155

You have never bought from Amazon have you? The whole idea of shopping at Amazon is the keep from going out. Amazon doesn't make most the stuff they sell they get it from vendors. If the vendor charges 20 bucks for a T-shirt amazon cannot adjust the price on free shipping. If I cannot get it to my door I will just drive to the mall and get it same day.

And no the idea was for Amazon to reduce cost not to help cyclists. The idea was to make Amazon deliveries easier for Amazon by moving employee costs to private contractors. That reduces the personnel cost and increases the balance sheet for Amazon. Amazon is all about profit. Just look at what happened when Seattle levied a tax on employees to help pay for homeless in the city. Amazon cancelled a large building project and was planning on moving 5000 jobs somewhere else. The tax was overturned the very next day.

Mobile 155

You have to pay for the truck to pick up at the warehouse and you have to pay the driver to deliver the packages. Amazon isn't looking for last mile they are looking for warehouse to home delivery. And 50 bucks a day is only $6.25 an hour. But if anyone believes that can make a living delivering Amazon packages I say sign up. Amazon will still get a better deal from USPS. And the customer gets the package delivered to the mail box or the door.

Mobile 155

Check out a day in the life of a UPS driver. They may be the standard. Try and think if you could beat them with bike deliveries.
18 Secrets of UPS Drivers | Mental Floss

CliffordK

I have to assume you read what you quoted.

$50 for 2 hours work is $25 / hour.

I didn't say a livable wage, but not bad for part-time work to supplement other income, or cater to individuals who wish to work part-time for one reason or another. Students? Retired? Working moms?

Yep.. one would have to run the truck, but would have to do so anyway as there are many locations across the USA not within 20 miles of the warehouses, and it would massively inefficient to expect delivery vans to drive 200 miles each way to pick up their daily cargo.

The big question is whether pre-containerizing shipments for quick drops would be efficient or inefficient. And, perhaps designing a system to pick the containers and drop them quickly without a dock. Also a system to exchange empty and full containers on the truck with partial loads.

Mobile 155

I thought you were saying they could make 50 bucks a day and that was part time work. Not a living wage for sure. But Amazon is trying to find ways to cut company costs. https://therideshareguy.com/delivery...share-drivers/

tandempower

If the vendor gets the entire $20 price payment and Amazon gets nothing, how does Amazon make money then, exactly?

Who said anything about giving charity to cyclists? They are selling $34,000msrp vans to vendors for $10k. That's a $24,000 subsidy per van. All I said was that if you give the same subsidy to vendors who utilize bike couriers to reduce the number of vans needed per zipcode, you could give the same subsidy to the cyclists. The assumption is that 1 van driver and 5 cyclists can deliver as many packages as 3 van drivers and just as fast. If they have to all be delievered to front doors, the cyclists can do that more efficiently than van drivers, whose vehicle is better suited to making the long trip between the warehouse and each zip+4 areas than to go from house to house.

But, like I said, the reason I don't think they would even consider using bike couriers has nothing to do with delivery efficiency, it has to do with the fact that they're really trying to sell more vans and make more money that way. Business is funny. You can take a less efficient system and use it to create unnecessary sales and then use the unnecessary sales to induce investors to drive up your stock price. That way, you can borrow money against future waste spending to pay for waste in the present.

I-Like-To-Bike

Also check out the day in the life of a Flex Driver delivering for Amazon. https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...orkers/563444/


I'll let the dreamers figure out how bicyclists will make a living adapting their vehicles to pickup and deliver these packages in all weather, all year, let alone share the meager earnings of the van/motor vehicle operators.

I-Like-To-Bike

Who, besides you, said anything about selling $34,000 vehicles for $10,000?

tandempower

Did you read any of the linked articles? Amazon is charging prospective delivery people $10,000 (at least, they hint that this is a minimum). The cargo vans they have to use/buy are Mercedes Sprinters, which I googled have an MSRP of $34,000. So if they're selling these vans for a buy-in price of $10,000, that's a $23,000 discount, right? If you make that into a subsidy for package delivery instead of a van-discount, which is only fair if it's not just a scam to sell vans; then the delivery franchises are free to hire bike couriers to help with the deliveries and reduce the number of vans per delivery. I don't think they will want to allow franchises to use bike couriers in this way, however, because I think their plan is to make money selling vans and allowing the use of bike couriers would interfere with that.

So I'm being cynical and saying that the possibility of using bike couriers is structured out of the options by the primary business interest of selling vans, but I hope I'm wrong and Amazon makes the $23,000 discount into a subsidy that franchises can earn for their bike couriers by delivering packages instead of as a kickback for buying, maintaining, and insuring vans along with delivering packages.

I-Like-To-Bike

Wrong, because Amazon is NOT selling the vans for $10,000. That sales price is your dream/fabrication, but don't let that stop you from expanding on your dreamy economic theorizing.

tandempower

Then why don't they sell the vans at MSRP and allow the couriers to decide whether or not to buy them, which vehicles to use, and whether or not to use bikes, etc.?

I-Like-To-Bike

Ask Mr. Bezos.

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