Transforming Last-mile Logistics

Oliver Bates,Fraser Mcleod,Tom Cherrett,Sarah Wise,Maja Piecyk,Adrian Friday,Nigel Davies,Julian Allen,Marzena Piotrowska,Thuba Nguyen,Tolga Bektas

doi:10.1145/3173574.3174100

Oliver Bates, Fraser Mcleod + Show 9 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174100

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Abstract

Road congestion, air pollution and sustainability are increasingly important in major cities. We look to understand how last-mile deliveries in the parcel sector are impacting our roads. Using formative field work and quantitative analysis of consignment manifests and location data, we identify how the effectiveness of life-style couriers is contributing to both environmental and non-environmental externalities. This paper presents an analysis of delivery performances and practices in last-mile logistics in central London, quantifying the impacts differing levels of experience have on overall round efficiency. We identify eleven key opportunities for technological support for last-mile parcel deliveries that could contribute to both driver effectiveness and sustainability. We finish by examining how HCI can lead to improved environmental and social justice by re-considering and realizing future collaborative visions in last-mile logistics.

Highlights

Online shopping and e-commerce have grown rapidly in the UK: they accounted for 14.2% (£50 billion per year) of all retail spending in July 2016, seeing an increase of 17.3% spent weekly between July 2015 – July 2016 [61]
While there are similarities between gig-economy or on-demand workers and life-style couriers in terms of performance-based pay and workers’ rights [29, 80, 40] the main distinction is that we focus on the last-mile parcel delivery sector
We focus on understanding where HCI is situated to help novice and life-style couriers in the last-mile parcel sector and realize the role of the workforce in more sustainable last-mile logistics

Summary

Introduction

Online shopping and e-commerce have grown rapidly in the UK: they accounted for 14.2% (£50 billion per year) of all retail spending in July 2016, seeing an increase of 17.3% spent weekly between July 2015 – July 2016 [61]. Growth in the expectation of low price (or free to the consumer) deliveries and collections [26, 55, 59] and the real cost of home deliveries to retailers [83] has put further pressure on the sector and increased the reliance on cheaper sources of labour such as life-style couriers. These workers are self-employed in UK law meaning they have varied and often no guaranteed work, a fixed-term or zero-hour contract, or are working flexible hours dependant on industry demand (cf ‘gig-economy’ and on-demand workers). All next-day delivery companies hire in additional drivers on a casual basis to cope with seasonal peak periods, and some of these companies chose to subcontract portions of their delivery work to other companies

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