U.S. Postal Service To Launch Experimental Same-Day Delivery Service In November

http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/12/u-s-postal-service-plans-to-launch-experimental-same-day-delivery-service-in-november/

by skennedy • 14 years ago

44 36 14 years ago

memset• 14 years ago

Here is maybe a silly question: I order food every day. I make a phone call or use a website, and an hour later, a pizza or sandwich shows up to my door.

What is prohibitive about doing this for groceries, toiletries, or other other arbitrary merchandise?

It seems like if I order "banana pudding" from my local pizza place, I get it in an hour. If I order "a banana and cup of pudding" from FreshDirect, I have to wait for them to deliver it the next day within a 4-hour window.

Is there something fundamentally different about shipping goods as compared to shipping ready-made food? Why don't we already see more of this?

adamjernst• 14 years ago

Many third-world countries already have this—usually fleets of young men on motorcycles that will deliver whatever you need.

TruthElixirX• 14 years ago

i.e. Tons of unused labor at cheap prices.

wtn• 14 years ago

The USPS once had twice-daily delivery (ended in 1950).

Back then, mail could be delivered same day within a city.

kloncks• 14 years ago

Postmates - for anything - and Instacart - for groceries - are fixing this problem.

vacri• 14 years ago

Ready-made food is more expensive (and often hot), and there's a considerable demand for it. Same-day delivery of bulk goods doesn't make as much sense.

Couriers already inhabit the same-day postal service, and they're really expensive by comparison to regular post. As a result, you're not going to be shipping non-urgent bulk goods.

GavinB• 14 years ago

When you order cooked food, you're already paying a premium for someone to work on your order right now. So the price differential doesn't seem that great to go from takeout or eat in to delivery. This is why pizza delivery seems so cheap ($4-5 depending on how you tip).

When you're ordering delivery of something that wasn't already priced as on-demand, you're going to find the price dramatically increases and you really don't want to pay 2x the normal price for your toothbrush and 12 pack of soda.

There's also the economies of scale that aren't set up yet--those will help somewhat once same day delivery is widespread.

w1ntermute2• 14 years ago

> When you order cooked food, you're already paying a premium for someone to work on your order right now. So the price differential doesn't seem that great to go from takeout or eat in to delivery. This is why pizza delivery seems so cheap ($4-5 depending on how you tip).

On a related topic, why is only pizza delivery common in many parts of the US? In other countries, such as Japan, you can find home delivery options from all kinds of restaurants, but this doesn't exist in a lot of America, particularly the suburbs.

untog• 14 years ago

I was at a hackathon last weeked called Hackfood[1] that.. well, sounds exactly like the name would imply.

Someone made a really quick hack called DeliveryHop that was actually a really interesting idea. Basically, a system for 'free agents' to pick up orders from restaurants and deliver them, rather than restaurants using their own employees. It seems like it has a ton of benefits (for one, the delivery guy could pick up from multiple restaurants delivering to the same area = efficiency), and could easily expand beyond restaurants.

I have no idea how much restaurants really care about the cost of deliveries, though- in a not-insignificant number of cases it's probably the owner's son doing the delivery, or similar. Still, a fascinating idea.

[1] http://pandodaily.com/2012/10/08/hacking-food-deliciously-wi...

kevinwuhoo• 14 years ago

If I'm not misunderstanding you, this seems to be the same thing as Postmates[1]. I've used it for food more than once in SF.

[1] http://postmates.com/

narcissus• 14 years ago

We had a similar thing in my home town in Australia at some point too: the big selling point for me, at least, was that when you were hanging out at a friend's place and you decided that you just wanted to order in, you no longer had to agree on what to get :)

Another business that used to operate, at least, was a liquor delivery service, but only to restaurants. Back there, at least, a restaurant can be licensed to serve liquor, or licensed for BYO (which I presume was cheaper). So what would happen would be a restaurant would be licensed for BYO, but still have a wine menu: when you ordered off the menu, you were technically ordering through the delivery service and they would drop the wine off (they were driving around all the time). So you may have waited a little longer, but it was cheaper for everyone...

ecspike• 14 years ago

If you are in SF, you can do that with groceries. The app is called Instacart. They deliver in 1 hr or 3 hrs depending on the premium.

http://www.instacart.com/?desktop=t

Aloisius• 14 years ago

Isn't that what Postmates is? And Kozmo back in the 90s?

don_draper• 14 years ago

A better feature would be to add an 'opt out' function for junk mail.

leeoniya• 14 years ago

i was just thinking about this. i would collect all mail addressed to "current resident" or something equally vague and every christmas drop it off in front of the post office.

tomrod• 14 years ago

Would you then receive it back in your mailbox? I haven't mailed a letter in years, so I'm not sure junkmail gets stamp-canceled.

hatcravat• 14 years ago

They can't add that feature because they already have it.

Karunamon• 14 years ago

Not really. The best you can do is opt out of directly mailed advertisements to you, personally. If it's one of those "current resident" things, those get blasted out en masse to every house in an area. You're getting those in your mailbox regardless of how many "do not market" lists you put yourself on.

anewguy• 14 years ago

Where do you think the post office makes most of its money? It's basically a spam operation that subsidizes a useful service.

ablefire• 14 years ago

I'm not affiliated with them but I have been using PaperKarma on my iPhone. I snap a picture of the offending piece of junk mail and they figure out who it's from and submit a request to remove me from the list. Still waiting to see how effective it is but it's very satisfying to get notifications that they correctly identified the spammer and have asked them to remove me from their list.

willholloway2• 14 years ago

USPS is a national treasure. A fantastically efficient organization and an example of a publicly owned and operated entity running well. USPS needs to be increasing services, not cutting services. Saturday delivery should not be cut. Sunday delivery should be added.

USPS is indispensable infrastructure, and crucial to e-commerce.

Amazon is owning retail, and USPS should be fighting to make every Prime delivery in the nation, even on Sunday.

Local post offices have great reach and location. Right now they are prohibited by law from engaging in other services. That law is obsolete.

001sky• 14 years ago

I agree with some elements of where you are going with this, but caution the general reader to not put too much stake in "new services" or "growth". The USPS needs to shrink, as over 40% of their business is <delivering junk mail>[1]. That was their latest "growth" initiative. Now they overexpanded their overhead, and are facing cuts. New services (not junk) should be added to replace declining 1st class, but the USPS needs to be radically re-scalled and made efficient. This does no mean closing branches, it means cutting overhead. US taxpayers should be subsisizing a communications infrastructure, not be subsidizing a direct-marketing operation.

________________

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_mail

toomuchtodo• 14 years ago

US taxpayers should be subsisizing a communications infrastructure, not be subsidizing a direct-marketing operation.

Replace communications infrastructure with distribution network, and I totally agree.

I can already communicate across the globe in seconds; USPS should be used for cost-effective, efficient local delivery across the country.

willholloway2• 14 years ago

The junk mail operation needs to be reigned in. Right now the Post Office does not need subsidies, that may change in the future. Delivering junk mail is hurting the brand with the tax payers that may be asked to give the subsidy.

The thrust of my argument, that services need to be added and not cut, is to say that the Post Office should be made more useful and not less.

If the utility of the USPS dwindles, and we first cut Saturday delivery, and we close neighborhood Post Offices and make cuts to service so that you cant pick up the phone and get a local employee on to help you. If we go that route, and that is the direction we are headed now, the chorus of voices allied against the Post Office will be bolstered. The public will say, with some justification, that the Post Office is not that useful and therefore should be let go.

A national, publicly owned and operated non-profit efficient distribution network: indispensable to our modern economy.

U.S. Postal Service To Launch Experimental Same-Day Delivery Service In November

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