Last-Mile Delivery Innovations and Best Practices in the Age of E-commerce

E-commerce has become a fundamental part of the shopping experience. It has transformed how consumers shop and, in many cases, it has improved accessibility to goods and services. Another benefit is the substitution of personal shopping trips with consolidated deliveries, which can significantly reduce transportation-related negative externalities from urban goods movements. However, the recent trend towards consumer-focused services in last-mile distribution has adversely impacted the economic viability of urban goods movement. Frequent less-than-truckload last-mile deliveries can lead to increased freight distribution costs and associated environmental externalities. Opportunities and challenges associated with alternate last-mile distribution strategies were studied by researchers at the University of California, Davis. The study examined ways that companies might adapt to increasingly consumer-focused trends in e-commerce towards rush delivery within strict time windows (expedited logistics). The team developed an explicit dynamic and stochastic location-routing model to assess the performance of several distribution initiatives. This policy brief summarizes the findings from that research and provides policy implications. View the NCST Project Webpage