Amazon is prototyping delivery lockers at 7-Eleven stores.
This sounds like an interesting idea, but it seems a shame to me to only use them for Amazon. Why not let customers sign up to get all their UPS, Fedex and other deliveries at facilities like this? It would do wonders for reducting last-mile delivery VMT in neighborhoods. And I’d love not to have to be around for signatures.
8 responses to “Could these be for More than Amazon?”
For many types of parcels these days, last-mile delivery is handled not by UPS or FedEx, but by the good old-fashioned US Postal Service…
…which, after years of inadequate funding, onerous pension funding requirements, declining mail volume, is teetering on the edge, with a good number of politicians in DC (in both parties) lining up to shove it off completely.
One wonders if major shippers are concerned that they may need to make alternate arrangements?
I pick up virtually all of my FED EX packages by bike from the Swan Island facility. The local 7-eleven would be far more convenient. I’ve never understood the need for door to door delivery of packages.
If there is enough mail volume–i.e. the USPS–it’s more efficient to have the mailman swing by people’s houses and deliver than have them go pick it up, as more can be done in a single trip. Assuming, of course, that the trips taken otherwise to pick up mail would be a) special trips, and b) done in an inefficient manner.
Most residences, however, only receive packages occasionally, so having a truck driver come to the door just to deliver a new book from Amazon isn’t terribly efficient.
What about picking up packages at the neighborhood FedEx stores (the ones that were formerly Kinkos)? It’s my understanding that they will hold packages there today, instead of just at Swan Island.
And I do believe there are mailing places that will accept packages for delivery on behalf of customers and hold them until they come in, though this requires set-up in advance.
Upsides of using 7-Elevens are the hours they are open, and that people may already be familiar with them.
I like the idea. It’s like a P/O box on steroids! I’d go one step further and marry this concept with earth class mail and notify people when they have a package or mail to pick up take a picture of the mail and then people will know how important it is first before trundling down to the store to pick it up. I also think they should allow the USPS to just die. It’s one of those “sacred” institutions that only exists because it always has before… Let go it go belly up and allow some private entity like UPS to do the deliveries. Put all the mail in a box and send it weekly to a dropbox like as far as I’m concerned.
I like the idea. It’s like a P/O box on steroids!
I don’t get it. I don’t see how this is better than a USPS PO box or private mailbox. The idea doesn’t seem like anything new. Can’t you get boxes at places like Mailbox Etc. and UPS stores and whatnot? Is this novel just because it’s limited to Amazon?
well I don’t see it necessary to even HAVE the USPS when most of what they deliver is junk mail anyway…. what a waste of $$$! i am living in a rural area (Dayton, OR) but they “technically” consider Yamhill County part of the “Portland Metropolitan area” and everyone I know makes daily trips to Salem, McMinnvile, and my parents’ business is on Swan Island to which they go at least 4 times a week. We would be just fine picking up in town and it would probably even be better since the USPS is notorious for delivering our mail to other people and vica versa. i could see the value in having USPS do delivery in (what I consider) TRULY rural areas like in E. Oregon where they have to drive 100 miles to the nearest outpost but for anyone who lives in the valley even “out in the country” isn’t far from a big city. The only people I know who still rely on it are old people who are set in their ways….
Removal of the local community Post Office to that of door to door service has been the financial death of USPS, among other things.
Just think of all that gas (and labor) being wasted out the tail pipe as it drops off mail at your gang-style mailbox outside of your house.