Abstract

The next-day delivery services account for 56% of UK domestic parcel volumes and associated van activity is predicted to increase by 15.6% to 2019 compared to 2015 levels. With the emergence of crowd-shipping as a viable transportation mechanism, there is scope to move away from motorised delivery to walking and cycling parcel freight over the last-mile. Working with delivery data from a carrier in London, the presentation will show that parcel carrier drivers currently spend an average of 4.6 hours per day during their vehicle rounds sorting, unloading and delivering parcels on foot, walking, on average, 7.9 km (4.9 miles) while their vehicles are parked at the kerbside. The introduction of portering, where the driving and walking functions are separated using dedicated lifestyle couriers to deliver the parcels, would have reduced the vehicle dwell time at kerbside in the example studied by 90% (from 140 mins to 14 mins) and distance driven by 55% (8 km to 3.6km). This reduction in vehicle activity is offset by the walking which would increase by 76% from 5.8 km (without portering) to 10.2 km (using portering). If such reductions were projected for all next-day parcel activity across central London, one might expect overall kerbside dwell time to reduce by 1.98 million hours and distance travelled by 7.5 million vehicle kilometres per annum resulting from a move to walking parcels over the last-mile.

Speaker Bio

Tom Cherrett is a Professor in Logistics and Transport Management within the Transportation Research Group in Engineering and the Environment at the University of Southampton. He teaches transport planning, freight and passenger systems and construction management to Masters and Undergraduate students. His research interests cover: i) Core goods distribution (things that we buy) and how retail logistics can be made more efficient within and between our urban areas but particularly over the last mile; ii) The use of smartphone technology in logistics to enable customers and employees to better share and use data; iii) Remote monitoring technology working with optimisation techniques to more effectively manage the collection of waste and recyclables in urban areas. He has over 130 journal and conference papers published and is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Logistics and Transport.

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