An interesting wrinkle in package delivery
This morning, the door bell rang, and there was a guy standing on the doorstep with the Amazon package in his hand. However, this was not a guy decked out in the uniform of Securicor or DHL, but someone dressed in normal clothes. Not only that, but he'd turned up not in a Securicor van as has previously been the case, but in what looked like his own car, which had other packages in the back.
Now, I know that Next have used this model for some years now, as my sister worked as a part-time courier for them. The basic premise being that packages from the main depot are shipped out in larger vans to a series of local couriers who are payed a fee per package delivered. This saves the courier company from having to maintain local depots and a fleet of smaller vans for deliveries. It was a surprise to me to see a mainstream courier service using this model, but I guess if you look at it, it probably helps to keep costs down. The only downside I can see is that the people who actually deliver the package to your door do not have the courier company's name plastered all over them, so the company may not gain the brand awareness that it would by having their own employees do the deliveries.
Can't see UPS doing this though, can you ?
