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YOU ARE THE DRONE in Amazon's rumoured new parcel delivery plan

P. Lee

>> "The last few miles are the worst paid in the independent delivery networks, [...]"

>Yet the economics of international container shipping has apparently made "the last mile" the most expensive leg for an individual package.

These two go together. Bulk carrying makes things cheap, especially for uniformly packaged goods; individual package delivery is hard to make cost effective. Standard postmen in the past have cut costs by doing everyone in an area, but couriers have relatively few packages which makes them expensive. Email has cut the number of letters, so now even letters are few and far between, driving up unit costs on letter delivery.

Rather than going for end-user drones, I'd be asking shops (supermarkets?) to become drop-off points though they may see that as self-defeating.

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