Ducth PostNL will purchase e-bikes for all 18,000 mail deliverers. In this way, they can make longer postal rounds in the future. In urban areas with a lot of mail, it concerns electric cargo bikes, in quieter regions around normal e-bikes.
That mail guys (and girls) have to cover larger delivery areas because of decreasing volumes of letters and cards. Every Dutch person sent twelve tickets per year in 2016, now there are only ten. In one decade, the postal market halved to 2.5 billion items per year, the lion’s share of which is business mail. And in 2025, the current post will be halved again, according to Dutch PostNL.
Peak shaving
To cope with decreasing volumes, PostNL is implementing a different delivery method. The company wants to manage the workload by peak shaving. The Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday are busy, but the Wednesday and Friday are not. PostNL, therefore, wants to agree with business customers that non-urgent mail (72 hours post) will be delivered on two fixed days a week.
Longer postal rounds
This makes PostNL more flexible and enables employees to work longer hours. At the same time, the company is going to redistribute districts and mail deliverers have to cover a larger area. “Now people are ready with their round regularly after 1.5 hours, soon there will be longer or larger rounds of four hours.” To make this possible, PostNL will purchase large numbers of e-bikes and cargo bikes from next year. In Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, PostNL has good experience with e-bikes and cargo bikes