by Walther Ploos van Amstel
The DELPHI project aims to tackle key challenges in last-mile delivery and urban logistics—such as high costs, environmental impacts, data fragmentation, and stakeholder misalignment—by integrating passenger and freight transport through a cross-modal, multilevel governance model. Central to the project is the development of a Federated Network of Freight and Passenger Platforms designed to improve data …
Imagine picking up a parcel for your neighbor simply because it’s on your way home. It may sound unusual, but the concept of crowd shipping is being seriously explored as a smart and sustainable way to complete the “last mile” of a parcel’s journey. TU Delft researcher Patrick Stokkink is diving into how this new approach to delivery could work in …
Belgium’s Carrefour Market is collaborating with Shopopop. Customers can deliver groceries for others, such as neighbors, and earn between 6 and 9 euros. Orders are placed via the Carrefour Fast Delivery app, which offers same-day grocery delivery. Shopopop claims to be the largest crowd-shipping platform in the world. The 6 to 9 euros is a …
E-commerce established the consumer as a freight actor. This new reality in the e-commerce supply chain holds economic, social, and environmental opportunities. Consumers have become an essential stakeholder in freight transport, which current logistics systems thus do not reflect. There are three ways in which the integration of consumers is vital to advance last-mile deliveries. First, logistics …
The fast growth of e-commerce in urban areas has led to a surge in last-mile transportation demand and an associated increase in external effects: congestion, noise, and visual pollution. A recent paper analyses a new urban freight transport service that could potentially reduce this footprint: crowd shipping. Crowd shipping is a service where a package …
Most current crowdsourced logistics aim to minimize systems cost and maximize delivery capacity, but the efforts of crowdsourcers such as drivers are almost ignored. In the delivery process, drivers usually need to take long-distance detours in hitchhiking rides based package deliveries. In a new paper by Cheng et al. (2022), researchers propose an approach that …
The rapid emergence of direct-to-home delivery models has quickly changed the spatial and temporal distribution of both individual travelers’ trips and of urban goods movements. A growing number of household and consumer products now being delivered directly to homes rather than being picked up in retail stores.
Roadie is creating a wide last-mile delivery network in the US by using excess capacity already on the road. MH&L talked with Marc Golin, founder, and CEO of Roadie. Marc was remodeling a property and couldn’t get the part he needed for a number of days. Driving along the freeway it occurred to him that all of …
Crowd logistics is an alternative to traditional home deliveries by parcel companies and is believed to be more sustainable. The idea of crowd logistics is that parcels and passengers are co-transported along a passenger trip that was intended to be made for another purpose.