Americans want everything delivered, and it's causing problems

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Sentry18

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...d-and-its-causing-problems/ar-BBYhFjH?ocid=se

Americans want everything delivered, and it's causing problems

David Ingram and Adiel Kaplan


There's only so many boxes that can be delivered in a day.

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© Spencer Platt Internet Economy Brings Delivery Gridlock To Major Cities
Warehouse space is nearly full, with vacancy near an all-time low. Streets are crammed with delivery vans blocking traffic. City curbs are increasingly a turf war between delivery drivers and everyone else. Even grocery store aisles can feel crowded — at least, when staff for delivery services are scouring the shelves.

Americans are demanding more deliveries, and as a result, many of the things needed for delivery are becoming scarce. And with many companies pushing to meet that demand, industry experts say the U.S. faces a problem — its infrastructure can only handle so many deliveries.

The crunch has been extreme in the weeks leading up to Christmas, but it's a year-round phenomenon, and it's one that's causing people up and down the delivery chain to rethink the design of American cities, streets and buildings.

"E-commerce has completely transformed the industrial market, and we're still kind of wrapping our heads around it," said Matthew Walaszek, an associate director of research at CBRE, a commercial real estate firm.

It's a transformation years in the making and inspired by convenience. Amazon Prime launched in 2005, tantalizing consumers with two-day delivery and whetting their appetites for the parade of delivered goods that would follow: prepared food, groceries, gifts, paper towels, mattresses, wardrobe recommendations and nearly anything else that could fit in a box.

Established retailers have chased Amazon's lead in home delivery, while startup companies are forgoing malls or other physical locations and selling directly to customers, through the mail or other delivery service.

"Seven years ago, thinking that you'd be getting cheeseburgers delivered by the millions was kind of crazy, right?" said Chris Baggott, CEO of ClusterTruck, a food and delivery company founded in 2015.

But the reckoning has arrived: The physical infrastructure of the country doesn't yet match its delivery ambitions. There's just too much stuff getting delivered.


Packed house
Start with the warehouse space, from the massive 1 million-square-foot fulfillment centers to the "last mile" depots closer to city centers. Though the U.S. has added around 1 billion square feet of warehouse space in the past six years, the vacancy rate is near a historic low and rent is still rising, according to CBRE data.

"Our warehouses are stacked to the brim," Walaszek said.

Developers have begun to think vertically. Last year, Prologis built the country's first three-story warehouse in Seattle, with ramps so that delivery trucks can access the upper floors. Industry analysts say multifloor warehouses are beginning to make sense in areas where land is pricey, and for the first experiment Amazon and Home Depot signed on as tenants.

Now, similar buildings are in the works, including a planned four-story warehouse in a Brooklyn industrial park. (Multistory warehouses are already a reality in Asia, where they rise more than 20 stories high and have ramps long enough to accommodate foot races.)

A new model has popped up to rent the unused corners in warehouses, like an Airbnb but for spare capacity to store and ship inventory. Startups such as Flexe, Flowspace and CubeWork offer short-term rentals that are flexible on the amount of space and location — helpful for a retailer that doesn't want to commit to leasing a whole building.

"Everybody is trying to figure out how to catch up with Amazon with two-day shipping," said Dave Glick, CEO of Flexe. But, he added: "The capital that Amazon has invested over the last 20 years, most likely no one is ever going to reproduce."

Amazon has continued its investment beyond warehouses, building a delivery fleet that is now up to 30,000 trucks and vans, Bloomberg News reported last week, in a boon to the big automakers who manufacture the vehicles.

But absent the arrival of new vans, retailers have been enticing people to use their personal vehicles to deliver packages through Amazon Flex, Walmart's Spark Delivery and companies such as Instacart, whose workers shop for and deliver groceries. This month, Old Navy struck a deal with Postmates for drivers to deliver last-minute Christmas gifts.

And it's not just gifts and food that people are having delivered. Companies that sell larger items — like Wayfair, Overstock and a raft of mattress startups — are increasingly shipping bulky items to doorsteps.

In at least some markets, managers for delivery companies say they have trouble finding and keeping enough drivers, who, with unemployment nationally at a 50-year low, may have other options.

That's also creating some questions about safety.

"As demand grows, it becomes extremely difficult to find qualified people to do the job safely in the short amount of time that you have to find them and train them properly," said Amber King, a former manager for UPS in Virginia.

Mean streets
The scarcity issue extends to the physical infrastructure of U.S. streets, which in most places have not been designed to accommodate delivery trucks in significant numbers. In New York City, more than 1.5 million packages are delivered daily, and they bring along gridlock, safety concerns and pollution, The New York Times reported in October.

"If we all keep on buying as we are year after year, without regard to the impact, we are doomed," José Holguín-Veras, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, told Time magazine last year.

To try to help overwhelmed city planners, last year the Institute of Transportation Engineers published a 50-page Curbside Management Practitioners Guide, saying it wanted to help people in "optimizing curb space in this time of change." Washington, D.C., is experimenting with new pick-up/drop-off zones, or PUDOs.

Social media is filled with complaints from people who dislike seeing all the delivery services in their neighborhoods, and some companies are looking for alternatives — whether it's long-promised delivery drones, cargo bikes that first caught on in Europe or scooters that can fit into bicycle lanes.

"The issue is, there's nowhere to park, and if you're making multiple stops in that van, you have to find 'nowhere to park' multiple times," said Max Smith, CEO of OjO Electric, a maker of battery-powered scooters currently being tested to delivery takeout food. "You have to double-park, and then you get tickets."

Skipping the last mile
Sometimes the answer has been to cut out final home delivery entirely. There are Amazon lockers, and some food delivery companies require customers to meet drivers at the curb rather than their front door.

Then there's what retailers call BOPUIS: buy online, pick up in store.

"What is the final conveyance vehicle? Is it a delivery person with a pushcart going that last mile? Is it a courier with a satchel on her back? Or is it some form of airborne conveyance?" asked Benjamin Conwell, a former Amazon fulfillment executive who now advises companies on logistics at the real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.

The logistics industry is going to learn a lot in the next several years, he said, and it may continue to feel big strains.

"That demand is not going to abate," Conwell said. "We don't see the basic trend tapering much at all."
 
It's amazing how things go in circles.
Decades ago people in rural areas had only a Sears & Roebuck catalog and a phone.
That catalog was their Amazon and the phone, their internet.
Everything they had came from Sears and most never even set foot in the store.
Of course this went the way of the dinosaur and 'shopping' became the national pastime.
Now we're back to square one except people won't even go out and get their own food:rolleyes:.
 
It's amazing how things go in circles.
Decades ago people in rural areas had only a Sears & Roebuck catalog and a phone.
That catalog was their Amazon and the phone, their internet.
Everything they had came from Sears and most never even set foot in the store.
Of course this went the way of the dinosaur and 'shopping' became the national pastime.
Now we're back to square one except people won't even go out and get their own food:rolleyes:.

There was also Sears and Roebuck Department stores too. Butthe catalog was in every American household.
Mama ordered 3 donkeys ' back then they were called Mexican Burros ' from the catalog in 1956. We had to go to the train station downtown Atlanta to lick them up.
Also most outhouses had one from the year before.
Back then it was for conveinance while tofay it is to kep us in out homes and tracked.
Today its to control us.
I don't want clothes or shoes I can'nt tryon or goods I can't inspect.
 
No more window shopping or malls we all enjoyed so much. All those jobs in retail gone and so will soon be our choices of what we want to buy.
So some rich control feaks can get richer and more powerful rule over everything we do ,say or use. This is NOT CAPITALISM which I'm totally for.
We are basically being treated liek farm animals, like Orwell predicted.
 
soylent green... "Please sir, may I have more?"

I'm gonna raise cattle, pigs and chickens and grow my fruits and veggies. My water comes out of a deep well and has been filtered for thousands of years.
 
I can answer the question about trucking.
States are changing the laws to lower the age from 21 to 18 for people that can drive an 80,000 pound rig down the interstate because they are desperate.
But they brought it on themselves.
Years ago Alabama state troopers figured out pulling over a truck yielded much more money than cars.
If they turn their blue-lights on a truck, it's never less than $1,000 because there are so many things on the truck to write up (missing lugnut?$150). You never see a trooper 'wasting his time' pulling over a car any more:rolleyes:.
It's all about revenue, not public safety.
The ticket goes against the driver not the company. Sure the company will pay it, but when the driver 'tickets-out' he ain't a driver no more:(. (unemployed)
Other drivers that I knew for years said: "they can HAVE that ***t, I'll find something else to do!"
And you get where we are today.:mad:,
Freight slowdown from a bad economy?
No.
They have run the drivers off, feeding off of them like vultures.
*Disclaimer: I had a CDL for decades and when they told me all of the new hoops I had to jump thru to keep it, I told'em "Naa, I'll just drive a car".
 
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I can answer the question about trucking.
States are changing the laws to lower the age from 21 to 18 for people that can drive an 80,000 pound rig down the interstate because they are desperate.
But they brought it on themselves.
Years ago Alabama state troopers figured out pulling over a truck yielded much more money than cars.
If they turn their blue-lights on a truck, it's never less than $1,000 because there are so many things on the truck to write up (missing lugnut?$150). You never see a trooper 'wasting his time' pulling over a car any more:rolleyes:.
It's all about revenue, not public safety.
The ticket goes against the driver not the company. Sure the company will pay it, but when the driver 'tickets-out' he ain't a driver no more:(. (unemployed)
Other drivers that I knew for years said: "they can HAVE that ***t, I'll find something else to do!"
And you get where we are today.:mad:,
Freight slowdown from a bad economy?
No.
They have run the drivers off, feeding off of them like vultures.
*Disclaimer: I had a CDL for decades and when they told me all of the new hoops I had to jump thru to keep it, I told'em "Naa, I'll just drive a car".

To be fair, trucks take a very heavy toll on roads and bridges. Especially when these vehicle or overweight. My brother-in-law is a DOT engineer and says you can tell what roads are used for hauling freight and what roads are not merely by looking at a 3 month maintenance record.

I am a firm believer that we should have continued to develop trains and tracks instead of using trucks.
 
To be fair, trucks take a very heavy toll on roads and bridges. Especially when these vehicle or overweight. My brother-in-law is a DOT engineer and says you can tell what roads are used for hauling freight and what roads are not merely by looking at a 3 month maintenance record...
Indeed they do. No question about it.
However, taking it out on the drivers is NOT the way to pay for it.
 
Trucks pay for those roads in fuel taxes and the companies are taxed too - all part of the interstate regulations (that are supposed to promote interstate commerce not restrict it).
 
Indeed they do. No question about it.
However, taking it out on the drivers is NOT the way to pay for it.

While I agree the industry is over regulated and I have seen a lot of trucks fined at weigh stations by motor enforcement. I have yet to see one where the driver just somehow honestly had no idea what the laws were and was somehow incapable of complying with them. My wife's employer is in the oil industry and owns over 600 gas stations, 200+ trucks, and a number of refineries, ethanol plants, soy diesel plants, etc. Somehow their drivers make a ton of money without being burdened by the government or motor enforcement. Of course her business is strict about legal compliance.
 
... I have yet to see one where the driver just somehow honestly had no idea what the laws were and was somehow incapable of complying with them. My wife's employer is in the oil industry and owns over 600 gas stations, 200+ trucks, and a number of refineries, ethanol plants, soy diesel plants, etc. Somehow their drivers make a ton of money without being burdened by the government or motor enforcement. Of course her business is strict about legal compliance.
It must be nice to work for her company:rolleyes:.
Drivers are put in 'no-win' scenarios daily. Here's an example. You decide what you would do...
You drive your tractor to Xxxxxx Distribution Center Friday about noon. They have a load for you to take 3 states away. You can be home by Saturday. There are 53 loading docks with trailers on them. They tell you your load is on dock 23.
You back up and hook to the trailer and pull it away from the dock. The guys on the loading docks are racing to beat the clock to get all those trailers loaded out by the weekend.
You pop the trailer brakes on and give it a quick walk around.
You see the brake chamber rods on 3 of the 4 chambers are sticking out so far the orange 'tattle-tale' paint is showing:
PLBTS3030.jpg

(this means the brakes are so far out of adjustment, the brake shoes may not even touch the brakedrums)
This is a serious (read expensive) violation.
It's not possible for them to offload the trailer and put it on another trailer.
And if the load doesn't get hauled, the Xxxxxx store 3-states away has no shipment for a week.:eek:
What does the truck driver do?
Explain to his family that they will have to make do with 4 days pay instead of 5?
Or does he take it easy and hope he doesn't get pulled over?
The brakes on his tractor work great:rolleyes:.
 
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He could either of those pr call the company mechanic to come out and adjust the brakes. If they are reluctant to do that then let them know that the first weigh station will likely remove the trailer from use until it is fixed.
As the driver he is responsible for the safety of his load. He has to live with the results of pulling a 40000 pound load with no way to stop it for the rest of his life. It's his call.
 
He could either of those pr call the company mechanic to come out and adjust the brakes. If they are reluctant to do that then let them know that the first weigh station will likely remove the trailer from use until it is fixed.
As the driver he is responsible for the safety of his load. He has to live with the results of pulling a 40000 pound load with no way to stop it for the rest of his life. It's his call.
It's ok.
Either choice he made, he isn't a truck driver anymore:(. (my point)
A: He pulled it and sumpthin' happened and he ain't a truck driver no more.
B: He refused to pull it, they called someone else who did, and they never called him again. He was stuck hauling loads to the dump and punctured his transmission burning it up. He didn't have $10k to get it fixed so it sits in his backyard and he delivers pizzas today.
Don't forget to tip him:rolleyes:.
 
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My son and nephew are both drivers - for two different outfits. Both have done things I wouldn't have but they have both drawn the line a few times too.
 
It's interesting to me that Americans always seem to look only at one end of the stick. I don't know what other countries do so can't say for them. Our land fills and garbage scenario is atrocious. How about making companies responsible for their own packaging disposal- charge the company a deposit for the jar or wrapper until it is recycled or returned etc. (I get that there are flaws with that. I don't have all the answers.) This would encourage people to shop locally - not as much packaging if we don't have to have a tomato shipped from another nation. Same for electronics. Local companies could buy "in bulk" saving on packaging as well. The volume of packaging would decrease- fewer trucks. Local produce etc - fewer trucks. Of course all this goes against mass consumerism- shame on me, what was I thinking :rolleyes:
 
My son and nephew are both drivers - for two different outfits. Both have done things I wouldn't have but they have both drawn the line a few times too.
God bless 'em!:huggs:
I'm sure they have made you very aware of how badly the country needs drivers.
Tell them to stay out of Alabama.
We must feed the beast...:cop:
 
Well, it all started when you started thinking. They are trying to do away with that, y'know.
I, personally, like that - you thinking. That shows there is still hope. Thinking is contagious so spread it around! :)
 
Thanks supervisor! I will let them know that I am not the only person that supports them. :)
 

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