13 ms·

Walmart stumbles with its 'last mile' package delivery plan

105 points by danso 8y ago

swagasaurus-rex 8y ago
TLDR: > Walmart’s associate delivery pilot program [...] started with store managers pitching employees an unusual new way to boost pay. Those who passed background checks could moonlight as drivers for the Walmart.com delivery service, they said. > Fourteen of the sixteen Walmart employees told Reuters that they were put off by the program’s poor compensation. And all of them expressed concern over who would be responsible if they got into an accident or if merchandise was lost.
- tmh79 8y ago
  sounds like less of a product and more of a risk arbitrage to me
  - _rpd 8y ago
    They also gained access to the employee's vehicle. But, yes, shifting pay from hourly to $2/package shifts a lot of the unpredictable elements of delivery to the employee. I can't imagine they'd get away with it in the end, with all the "Uber drivers are employees" rulings. And it does seem like version 2 of the program is hourly, without overtime.
    - djrogers 8y ago
      To be fair , it’s $2/package plus one hour’s wage.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  If you can't build it without being propped up on the risk of others, then you don't really know how to build it.
  - Avshalom 8y ago
    "To be fair" that sounds straight out of the play book of "growth oriented" companies in general.
    - drb91 8y ago
      Yup, this is the future without stronger labor laws.
    - dv_dt 8y ago
      Well there is a time element of how long one deals with the unknowns, but this is Walmart. A fortune 500 (100? 50?) company has the resources to skip most of the bootstrapping shortcuts and make a serious go at it to do a good eval.
      - amch 8y ago
        Walmart is the Fortune 1, FYI: http://fortune.com/fortune500/ http://fortune.com/fortune500/
slimsag 8y ago
It's ironic that Walmart has such a huge logistics problem in this area, because IMO Walmart and Sam's Club have insanely good logistics when it comes to getting product to their actual stores. They are by far in the best position to do grocery delivery, if only they could figure out 'last mile' delivery. The vast majority of people have rapidly moved to purchasing things from Amazon, and this leaves Walmart in the dust. Yes, fakes are an issue etc. but most people don't know that. All they know is that Amazon is easy, they think it is cheap, and that Amazon will resolve any issues they have when e.g. getting bad items. Amazon historically (and still kinda does) have a problem with getting perishables logistically to last-mile delivery points, whereas Walmart and Sam's Club have already figured this out and done it for a very long time. There are TONS of places in the U.S. that do not have a Whole Foods nearby, but have a Walmart or Sam's Club just a mile or so away. But Amazon is quickly catching up with its acquisition of Whole Foods, etc., and Walmart seems incapable of letting consumers just pay more to actually get this service like Amazon or Instacart do.
- allthenews 8y ago
  >Amazon historically (and still kinda does) have a problem with getting perishables logistically to last-mile delivery points, whereas Walmart and Sam's Club have already figured this out and done it for a very long time. I don't think getting groceries to store shelves counts as "last mile." The entire problem with last mile is that instead of delivering a truckload singular location, one is many delivering tiny shipments to scattered, irregular locations, which is substantially more time, labor, and fuel expensive, not to mention logistically more difficult.
  - slimsag 8y ago
    Totally, that was poor wording on my part. Instead of "last-mile delivery points" I should have said "warehouses (or stores) where last-mile delivery shipments originate". By purchasing Whole Foods, they solved a large portion of this, but the number of Whole Foods stores still is tiny in comparison to Walmart/Sam's Club (I think, I couldn't find numbers sadly)
newswriter99 8y ago
Let's list what Walmart was offering the pilot program volunteers: - Free TV or iPad for signing up (hock it* for ~$100 I guess) - $2 per package delivery (average 3-5 deliveries per night) - 54 cents for fuel per mile - Extra hour of OT pay (average pay $11 per hour) All of which the story says adds up to $15.40 for each 10 miles of five packages, not counting OT. After a week one employee said she got $100 after ~12 deliveries. All so you can spend an extra 30 minutes at your job waiting for someone else's groceries, which you will then spend 2 hours to deliver, by hand, to their (assuming) nice looking house with their nice looking family, as you then trudge back to your apartment and sit on your Walmart couch, in your Walmart clothes, eating your Walmart food and watching your Walmart TV. If that's not depressing I don't know what is. *edited for typo
- AckSyn 8y ago
  This presupposes the person delivering has a problem with envy, greed, and/or entitlement. A lot of people simply don’t care if others have more or less than the people they work for. Your comment is more telling about you than the broad generalization you paint of people.
- sbinthree 8y ago
  This is kind of a strange comment. I don't think a lot of HN folks have worked in last mile logistics, but $2/package is average to above average. Amazon typically pays around $1.50 for Prime packages and I would say it isn't just the upper middle class that is buying from Amazon at this point. If people don't pay for shipping, there will be a human cost. If people are willing to pay for some aspect of value-add (actually coming to your door, caring about retry attempts, caring about lost packages, caring about how well the people involved are treated) this would change fast. Anyone who tries to go slower than peak speed or do it ethically gets crushed by someone doing it faster or in a shadier way, because people refuse to pay for shipping.
  - danharaj 8y ago
    > but $2/package is average to above average. Amazon typically pays around $1.50 for Prime packages That just means working for Amazon is even more abysmal. Last mile logistics is shitty to human beings period.
jrockway 8y ago
I think people forget how entrenched and relatively good the existing package delivery services are. USPS has a key to my apartment building, so they can just show up and drop off packages hassle-free. UPS does not have that key, but they successfully break in every day and leave packages for my building with no problems. (Spent some time not working and they didn't even ring my buzzer in an attempt to get in, the packages were just magically in the common area. No doubt the driver knows the friendly neighbor that is happy to let him in and do his thing, and knows that the three buildings owned by my landlord have the same key/super, so can do 3 buildings worth of deliveries with one buzzer press.) Meanwhile, the upstarts just don't do this. Whoever Amazon contracts out to (is it still LaserShip?) just doesn't care about attempting to break into my building. They show up at 9pm and ring the buzzer, then leave if I don't go downstairs and open the door quickly enough. They are getting better, though, as I've seen some random LaserShip packages laying around in the common area. But I still think "shipped via USPS, this will arrive" and "shipped by LaserShip, better go pick it up at B&H and cancel the Amazon order". But anyway, expecting random Walmart employees to have the skills necessary to circumvent pesky locks is kind of unreasonable. When you do it every day for years you probably develop a process that works for each building you deliver to... but when it's a one-off thing for an extra $3... the customer probably isn't going to get their package. The customer that doesn't get their package is probably going to order from Amazon. Sorry, Walmart...
- magduf 8y ago
  Yeah, I've been having trouble with LaserShip too, but another alternative is to ship to an Amazon locker if you have one nearby.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  I'm with you on UPS, but among "existing package delivery services" I find FedEx to be pretty shit overall. At each commercial location I've had in multiple counties, they have delivered at a giant range of times (e.g. one day 9:20 AM and the next day 5:20 PM) with a lot of different drivers and about a 20% chance that they're busy today so they won't even come around (i.e. the business was open all day and there is no tag on the door) but they'll still flip the status to "customer not present". I've bitched to Amazon about using FedEx a lot, and now it seems they don't use FedEx for me very much anymore... of course other stores haven't gotten the message.
sxp62000 8y ago
I wonder if Whole Foods, Wegmans or Trader Joe's would be more successful at an experiment like this. I can't imagine anybody working at a Walmart store trusting their employer with schemes like this. P.S. Their new website homepage doesn't show any prices. It feels kind of dishonest.
- Kalium 8y ago
  That's such a good idea that Whole Foods is already doing it. You might know it as Amazon Fresh.
  - sxp62000 8y ago
    Whole Foods employees pick up stuff and deliver it to homes after their shift is over at the store?
    - Kalium 8y ago
      Amazon employees do. And Whole Foods has an Instacart partnership (delivery.wholefoodsmarket.com) from before they were acquired.
      - sxp62000 8y ago
        But that's not the same as a walmart employee finishing work, and then driving stuff to people's homes. Am I missing something?
        Kalium 8y ago
        I am admittedly abstracting a little bit, from this very particular program structure to the general problem of retail outlets doing home delivery to regular consumers. I suspect Amazon-owned companies are unlikely experiment with the particular structure Walmart is trying. It feels like Walmart is trying to solve a very particular problem that most other companies might not have.
pkulak 8y ago
I know this is an extreme comparison, but Walmart reminds me a lot of Blockbuster. I remember Blockbuster thought it would be fine because of physical stores all over the place. They thought they had a plan to leverage that, but they never could. Turns out no one cared about the physical stores.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Blockbuster's failure will be an important example for Walmart just as soon as people can download groceries, clothing, toothpaste, and lawnmowers.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Blockbuster's failure will be an important example for Walmart just as soon as people can download groceries Was Blockbuster killed by streaming? Or Netflix swapping rental from an ad hoc retail to a delivery subscription model?
    - donarb 8y ago
      BlockBuster made a killing on late fees. Netflix eliminated those.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Was Blockbuster killed by streaming? Or Netflix swapping rental from an ad hoc retail to a delivery subscription model? Both, together.
    - twblalock 8y ago
      The popularity of Redbox demonstrates that some people really do appreciate being able to drive to a store and rent a DVD. Blockbuster probably died because enough people switched to Netflix that the overhead of running stores outgrew the revenue. Redbox then swooped in with automated kiosks and were able to serve Blockbuster's remaining customers.
    - reviewmon 8y ago
jsumrall 8y ago
If you think last-mile logistics is interesting, come check out Picnic in the Netherlands. We're an online-only supermarket. We do milkman style deliveries, where we have a few fixed times per day that the customer can choose to have their delivery (20 minute window), allowing us to make the routing efficient and fast, enough that we can do free deliveries. This overall seems to be working better than Walmart's approach. We've got a pretty solid tech team, and always looking for more people to join. https://blog.picnic.nl/ https://blog.picnic.nl/
- karambahh 8y ago
  Had the pleasure to interact with PicNic CTO in their past job and met PicNic tech team at various conferences in Europe: top talent with a great team spirit working on many interesting topics. PicNic is a bit puzzling for traditional retailers. I interact with C-levels execs of "traditional" retailers in Europe and very few have heard about PicNic. When they realize what PicNic achieved in the NL, basically "solving" the last mile problem they all have, they usually are quite impressed. Obviously, last-mile delivery is highly country specific: sociology and urban planning/population density in the Netherlands is very different to any other European country. Attempt to roll out the PicNic model in Scandinavia (roughly the same population size) would be a completely different story. As an outsider, I'm wondering what PicNic next move will be. My money is on an international expansion into Germany, starting with Dusseldorf and its lander (similar population density and size).
  - jsumrall 8y ago
    You guessed correctly! https://ecommercenews.eu/dutch-online-supermarket-picnic-expands-germany https://ecommercenews.eu/dutch-online-supermarket-picnic-exp... Indeed some things work great in the Netherlands which might not work well in other places. But even if we have to change some parts of the delivery model to adapt to other markets, I think the high level concept has a high chance of working.
    - karambahh 8y ago
      I do agree. You're in a much better position than your competitors: easier for you to win on the delivery market in the FR than, say, for Carrefour or Auchan to solve it. (which they have attempted to solve for the last 10 years with varying degrees of success)
sjg007 8y ago
One idea would be to pay customers to deliver packages. Then you can incentivize them to come in to buy something and then take and deliver some packages for you.
- theunamedguy 8y ago
  It'd be much harder to keep people accountable. Who do you blame when the product arrives damaged (or not at all)?
  - sjg007 8y ago
    There's probably some way to incentivize good behavior. I would do it for my neighbors within reason. That being said Amazon is still leading the way, maybe Walmart can do USPS for the last mile as well.
eblanshey 8y ago
What about using Uber/Lyft for deliveries? There are dedicated people already willing to drive their own cars to transport things.
- Nerevarine76 8y ago
  The article says "Earlier this year, Reuters reported the retailer’s delivery partnerships with Uber and Lyft ended after the ride-hailing services struggled to deliver people and packages together." So sounds like they tried it already and may have had logistical issues.
  - GarrisonPrime 8y ago
    That sounds like they were trying to do deliveries and ride hails at the same time, and would struggle to get the deliveries done because they were getting interrupted by the hails (or had horrible hail rates because deliveries took them out of the hot zones). It may have worked much better if they didn't comingle the jobs, and had dedicated horus for deliveries separate from giving rides.
reviewmon 8y ago
Reminds me of kozmo.com https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com
- samstave 8y ago
  I recall buying DVDs from kozmo in 1999 and having them delivered by bike messenger to my office. I was on a flight with the founder in 2000 one time telling them how much I loved it and making suggestions about what is love to see, but also expressing how surprised I was that they could make a profit... They folded soon after... I still remember the last time I bought from them: Ran on DVD
fma 8y ago
It's amusing to me how out of touch executives are. Some executive makes a decision for this and everyone is too scared to tell them it's a stupid idea. This happens where I work, too. They could have had the employees deliver for 10 hours of their 40 hour shift so they aren't exhausted while driving. Have the employees do it during the shift rather than after which is likely during rush hour. Give employees consistent routes they are familiar with. If there's a package to deliver ok that route...great. if not, then do the regular associates job. Company vehicles to reduce burden on your employees who make $11 an hour. Buy some Chevy Bolt that can be charged at Walmart. It's also hatchback so store lots of stuff. Plaster Walmart ads to increase visibility of the service. A clean looking new car will increase branding. This is the largest retailer in the world...don't act like a poor startup.
- sumedh 8y ago
  > Some executive makes a decision for this and everyone is too scared to tell them it's a stupid idea. Or the executive tells them I am the Big Boss and this will definitely work.
  - BEEdwards 8y ago
    And everyone is to scared to say, "yes you're the big boss, but this idea is still dumb and won't work. Let's at least go on linkedin and try to poach at least one executive from amazon flex."
- amf12 8y ago
  Yeah, this was a great idea but terribly executed by the execs.
- dingaling 8y ago
  > Have the employees do it during the shift So then you have to have someone else on overlapping schedule to cover that portion of the shift whilst the original worker is away on delivery. But if there are no deliveries then cancel the overlap. And if the deliveries are to occur mid-shift then the overlapper is on a split-shift schedule. Eventually it becomes simpler to handle the deliveries outside the store shifts.
jackconnor 8y ago
Spoiler alert: They didn't pay their employees enough for the deliveries, and these employees ended up averaging about $7/hour to make deliveries. If they fixed this (seemingly) basic problem, I wonder how well this would work.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  $7 per hour using their personal vehicles and insurance. And personal insurance might not even cover these accidents.
joering2 8y ago
Gee, who here didn't foreseen an idea of strangers coming to your home to deliver after they can't wait to end their shift already (and go home) won't work. The article mentions billions put into figuring out how to tackle on Amazon success. Here is the plan, free of charge: Ask anyone why they chose Amazon over Wallmart, here is the answer: Both Amazon and Walmart has large range of goods, but Walmart lacks in reviews; offer perks and discounts (on products you have problems to sell) to those "good Wallmarters" who are willing to spend their time reviewing products online and you fix half of the problem. Make reviewing possible only to person who purchase a product from Wallmart to compete with horrible fake reviews that Amazon is plagued with. - Have ONE designated person (or few people) delivering per store and made it their full-time job to deliver. The reasons I hate going to Wallmart are: 1) lack of short-distance parking lots [takes me 10 minutes to find a spot, sorry I'm lazy]. 2) confusion of where a product is [take me extra time to walk and find an isle]. 3) checkout time and lines are ridiculous [being 24-hour open doesn't mean much when there is only one clerk at the night shift, so waiting time is the same at rush hour] - So have that ONE designated person: have their own reserved parking spot, have them handheld access to know where products are, have them skip checkout since products are paid online. Have them smart online app to deliver throughout the day, back and forth as many times as sophisticated algorithm of said app decides its the wise route possible. You welcome, Wallmart!
- ghaff 8y ago
  It’s not a service I use but my local Walmart is pushing curb side pickup of online orders. So is one of my local grocery chains. It isn’t really a use case that appeals to me and I don’t much like Walmart for food shopping anyway. But that addresses your specific complaints.
theshadowknows 8y ago
Or people could wait a damn day.
cavisne 8y ago
"All sixteen workers who had participated in the program said delivery of five packages would generally take them more than two hours to complete. If a worker drove 10 miles to drop five packages, that would earn them $15.40 in compensation per package and fuel, before overtime pay." They clearly just dont have the density of orders for this to work. Theres videos on youtube of the amazon flex app, a 2 hour shift with a car full of boxes is mostly within a couple of blocks.
ddebernardy 8y ago
If memory serves me well, a few store chains in Europe are exploring approaching this by flipping the problem on its head. Rather than delivering the goods at the customers' houses, they stick to having the local store prep the orders and then having customers show up at a glorified drive-through. Aren't there grocery stores in North America trying that approach? For all they know it might prompt a startup to actually solve the last mile problem for them, in much the same way as there's a startup or three out there that offer restaurant deliveries for places that don't support it out of the box.
kennydude 8y ago
I don't get how this is a major issue. Most UK supermarkets have an online delivery service (even Iceland!) You pick a delivery slot for a certain price (off peak is cheaper) and then choose what you want. They have store assistants with specific trolleys with plastic boxes for each order and fill up as they walk around the store. Boxes get loaded to a specially designed truck and delivered in the time slot. Works pretty well, unless you're this person https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/2sxjiv/tesco_home_delivery_substituted_my_kingsmill_5050/ https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/2sxjiv/tes...
- fredoralive 8y ago
  This appears to be more about general merchandise rather than groceries, I think the nearest comparison would be Argos's Fast Track delivery option where they seem (never used it myself) to have someone drive over from the nearest store rather than have a central warehouse. Not sure how Argos pays the drivers in their case.
- deadbunny 8y ago
  Haha, that link reminds me of a substitution I got one time. Frozen garlic cubes were replaced with frozen mixed veg. I thought it was a little odd at the time till the next time I was in the store and noticed the frozen garlic cubes were right next to the frozen mixed veg. So rather than apply logic and grab some other type of easy garlic they just grabbed the thing next to it. I actually facepalmed.
WilliG 8y ago
Sounds good. I'm often order prime package delivery. Only once I had some issues with the delivery service because of wrong postal code. Now I always check my postal code here https://worldpostalcode.com/china/ https://worldpostalcode.com/china/ to avoid such mistakes. Have no complaints at all.

105 points by danso 8y ago

TLDR: > Walmart’s associate delivery pilot program [...] started with store managers pitching employees an unusual new way to boost pay. Those who passed background checks could moonlight as drivers for the Walmart.com delivery service, they said. > Fourteen of the sixteen Walmart employees told Reuters that they were put off by the program’s poor compensation. And all of them expressed concern over who would be responsible if they got into an accident or if merchandise was lost.

tmh79 8y ago
sounds like less of a product and more of a risk arbitrage to me
- _rpd 8y ago
  They also gained access to the employee's vehicle. But, yes, shifting pay from hourly to $2/package shifts a lot of the unpredictable elements of delivery to the employee. I can't imagine they'd get away with it in the end, with all the "Uber drivers are employees" rulings. And it does seem like version 2 of the program is hourly, without overtime.
  - djrogers 8y ago
    To be fair , it’s $2/package plus one hour’s wage.
dv_dt 8y ago
If you can't build it without being propped up on the risk of others, then you don't really know how to build it.
- Avshalom 8y ago
  "To be fair" that sounds straight out of the play book of "growth oriented" companies in general.
  - drb91 8y ago
    Yup, this is the future without stronger labor laws.
  - dv_dt 8y ago
    Well there is a time element of how long one deals with the unknowns, but this is Walmart. A fortune 500 (100? 50?) company has the resources to skip most of the bootstrapping shortcuts and make a serious go at it to do a good eval.
    - amch 8y ago
      Walmart is the Fortune 1, FYI: http://fortune.com/fortune500/ http://fortune.com/fortune500/

slimsag 8y ago

It's ironic that Walmart has such a huge logistics problem in this area, because IMO Walmart and Sam's Club have insanely good logistics when it comes to getting product to their actual stores. They are by far in the best position to do grocery delivery, if only they could figure out 'last mile' delivery. The vast majority of people have rapidly moved to purchasing things from Amazon, and this leaves Walmart in the dust. Yes, fakes are an issue etc. but most people don't know that. All they know is that Amazon is easy, they think it is cheap, and that Amazon will resolve any issues they have when e.g. getting bad items. Amazon historically (and still kinda does) have a problem with getting perishables logistically to last-mile delivery points, whereas Walmart and Sam's Club have already figured this out and done it for a very long time. There are TONS of places in the U.S. that do not have a Whole Foods nearby, but have a Walmart or Sam's Club just a mile or so away. But Amazon is quickly catching up with its acquisition of Whole Foods, etc., and Walmart seems incapable of letting consumers just pay more to actually get this service like Amazon or Instacart do.

allthenews 8y ago
>Amazon historically (and still kinda does) have a problem with getting perishables logistically to last-mile delivery points, whereas Walmart and Sam's Club have already figured this out and done it for a very long time. I don't think getting groceries to store shelves counts as "last mile." The entire problem with last mile is that instead of delivering a truckload singular location, one is many delivering tiny shipments to scattered, irregular locations, which is substantially more time, labor, and fuel expensive, not to mention logistically more difficult.
- slimsag 8y ago
  Totally, that was poor wording on my part. Instead of "last-mile delivery points" I should have said "warehouses (or stores) where last-mile delivery shipments originate". By purchasing Whole Foods, they solved a large portion of this, but the number of Whole Foods stores still is tiny in comparison to Walmart/Sam's Club (I think, I couldn't find numbers sadly)

newswriter99 8y ago

Let's list what Walmart was offering the pilot program volunteers: - Free TV or iPad for signing up (hock it* for ~$100 I guess) - $2 per package delivery (average 3-5 deliveries per night) - 54 cents for fuel per mile - Extra hour of OT pay (average pay $11 per hour) All of which the story says adds up to $15.40 for each 10 miles of five packages, not counting OT. After a week one employee said she got $100 after ~12 deliveries. All so you can spend an extra 30 minutes at your job waiting for someone else's groceries, which you will then spend 2 hours to deliver, by hand, to their (assuming) nice looking house with their nice looking family, as you then trudge back to your apartment and sit on your Walmart couch, in your Walmart clothes, eating your Walmart food and watching your Walmart TV. If that's not depressing I don't know what is. *edited for typo

AckSyn 8y ago
This presupposes the person delivering has a problem with envy, greed, and/or entitlement. A lot of people simply don’t care if others have more or less than the people they work for. Your comment is more telling about you than the broad generalization you paint of people.
sbinthree 8y ago
This is kind of a strange comment. I don't think a lot of HN folks have worked in last mile logistics, but $2/package is average to above average. Amazon typically pays around $1.50 for Prime packages and I would say it isn't just the upper middle class that is buying from Amazon at this point. If people don't pay for shipping, there will be a human cost. If people are willing to pay for some aspect of value-add (actually coming to your door, caring about retry attempts, caring about lost packages, caring about how well the people involved are treated) this would change fast. Anyone who tries to go slower than peak speed or do it ethically gets crushed by someone doing it faster or in a shadier way, because people refuse to pay for shipping.
- danharaj 8y ago
  > but $2/package is average to above average. Amazon typically pays around $1.50 for Prime packages That just means working for Amazon is even more abysmal. Last mile logistics is shitty to human beings period.

jrockway 8y ago

I think people forget how entrenched and relatively good the existing package delivery services are. USPS has a key to my apartment building, so they can just show up and drop off packages hassle-free. UPS does not have that key, but they successfully break in every day and leave packages for my building with no problems. (Spent some time not working and they didn't even ring my buzzer in an attempt to get in, the packages were just magically in the common area. No doubt the driver knows the friendly neighbor that is happy to let him in and do his thing, and knows that the three buildings owned by my landlord have the same key/super, so can do 3 buildings worth of deliveries with one buzzer press.) Meanwhile, the upstarts just don't do this. Whoever Amazon contracts out to (is it still LaserShip?) just doesn't care about attempting to break into my building. They show up at 9pm and ring the buzzer, then leave if I don't go downstairs and open the door quickly enough. They are getting better, though, as I've seen some random LaserShip packages laying around in the common area. But I still think "shipped via USPS, this will arrive" and "shipped by LaserShip, better go pick it up at B&H and cancel the Amazon order". But anyway, expecting random Walmart employees to have the skills necessary to circumvent pesky locks is kind of unreasonable. When you do it every day for years you probably develop a process that works for each building you deliver to... but when it's a one-off thing for an extra $3... the customer probably isn't going to get their package. The customer that doesn't get their package is probably going to order from Amazon. Sorry, Walmart...

magduf 8y ago
Yeah, I've been having trouble with LaserShip too, but another alternative is to ship to an Amazon locker if you have one nearby.
jessaustin 8y ago
I'm with you on UPS, but among "existing package delivery services" I find FedEx to be pretty shit overall. At each commercial location I've had in multiple counties, they have delivered at a giant range of times (e.g. one day 9:20 AM and the next day 5:20 PM) with a lot of different drivers and about a 20% chance that they're busy today so they won't even come around (i.e. the business was open all day and there is no tag on the door) but they'll still flip the status to "customer not present". I've bitched to Amazon about using FedEx a lot, and now it seems they don't use FedEx for me very much anymore... of course other stores haven't gotten the message.

sxp62000 8y ago

I wonder if Whole Foods, Wegmans or Trader Joe's would be more successful at an experiment like this. I can't imagine anybody working at a Walmart store trusting their employer with schemes like this. P.S. Their new website homepage doesn't show any prices. It feels kind of dishonest.

Kalium 8y ago
That's such a good idea that Whole Foods is already doing it. You might know it as Amazon Fresh.
- sxp62000 8y ago
  Whole Foods employees pick up stuff and deliver it to homes after their shift is over at the store?
  - Kalium 8y ago
    Amazon employees do. And Whole Foods has an Instacart partnership (delivery.wholefoodsmarket.com) from before they were acquired.
    - sxp62000 8y ago
      But that's not the same as a walmart employee finishing work, and then driving stuff to people's homes. Am I missing something?
      - Kalium 8y ago
        I am admittedly abstracting a little bit, from this very particular program structure to the general problem of retail outlets doing home delivery to regular consumers. I suspect Amazon-owned companies are unlikely experiment with the particular structure Walmart is trying. It feels like Walmart is trying to solve a very particular problem that most other companies might not have.

pkulak 8y ago

I know this is an extreme comparison, but Walmart reminds me a lot of Blockbuster. I remember Blockbuster thought it would be fine because of physical stores all over the place. They thought they had a plan to leverage that, but they never could. Turns out no one cared about the physical stores.

wpietri 8y ago
Blockbuster's failure will be an important example for Walmart just as soon as people can download groceries, clothing, toothpaste, and lawnmowers.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Blockbuster's failure will be an important example for Walmart just as soon as people can download groceries Was Blockbuster killed by streaming? Or Netflix swapping rental from an ad hoc retail to a delivery subscription model?
  - donarb 8y ago
    BlockBuster made a killing on late fees. Netflix eliminated those.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Was Blockbuster killed by streaming? Or Netflix swapping rental from an ad hoc retail to a delivery subscription model? Both, together.
  - twblalock 8y ago
    The popularity of Redbox demonstrates that some people really do appreciate being able to drive to a store and rent a DVD. Blockbuster probably died because enough people switched to Netflix that the overhead of running stores outgrew the revenue. Redbox then swooped in with automated kiosks and were able to serve Blockbuster's remaining customers.
  - reviewmon 8y ago

jsumrall 8y ago

If you think last-mile logistics is interesting, come check out Picnic in the Netherlands. We're an online-only supermarket. We do milkman style deliveries, where we have a few fixed times per day that the customer can choose to have their delivery (20 minute window), allowing us to make the routing efficient and fast, enough that we can do free deliveries. This overall seems to be working better than Walmart's approach. We've got a pretty solid tech team, and always looking for more people to join. https://blog.picnic.nl/ https://blog.picnic.nl/

karambahh 8y ago
Had the pleasure to interact with PicNic CTO in their past job and met PicNic tech team at various conferences in Europe: top talent with a great team spirit working on many interesting topics. PicNic is a bit puzzling for traditional retailers. I interact with C-levels execs of "traditional" retailers in Europe and very few have heard about PicNic. When they realize what PicNic achieved in the NL, basically "solving" the last mile problem they all have, they usually are quite impressed. Obviously, last-mile delivery is highly country specific: sociology and urban planning/population density in the Netherlands is very different to any other European country. Attempt to roll out the PicNic model in Scandinavia (roughly the same population size) would be a completely different story. As an outsider, I'm wondering what PicNic next move will be. My money is on an international expansion into Germany, starting with Dusseldorf and its lander (similar population density and size).
- jsumrall 8y ago
  You guessed correctly! https://ecommercenews.eu/dutch-online-supermarket-picnic-expands-germany https://ecommercenews.eu/dutch-online-supermarket-picnic-exp... Indeed some things work great in the Netherlands which might not work well in other places. But even if we have to change some parts of the delivery model to adapt to other markets, I think the high level concept has a high chance of working.
  - karambahh 8y ago
    I do agree. You're in a much better position than your competitors: easier for you to win on the delivery market in the FR than, say, for Carrefour or Auchan to solve it. (which they have attempted to solve for the last 10 years with varying degrees of success)

sjg007 8y ago

One idea would be to pay customers to deliver packages. Then you can incentivize them to come in to buy something and then take and deliver some packages for you.

theunamedguy 8y ago
It'd be much harder to keep people accountable. Who do you blame when the product arrives damaged (or not at all)?
- sjg007 8y ago
  There's probably some way to incentivize good behavior. I would do it for my neighbors within reason. That being said Amazon is still leading the way, maybe Walmart can do USPS for the last mile as well.

eblanshey 8y ago

What about using Uber/Lyft for deliveries? There are dedicated people already willing to drive their own cars to transport things.

Nerevarine76 8y ago
The article says "Earlier this year, Reuters reported the retailer’s delivery partnerships with Uber and Lyft ended after the ride-hailing services struggled to deliver people and packages together." So sounds like they tried it already and may have had logistical issues.
- GarrisonPrime 8y ago
  That sounds like they were trying to do deliveries and ride hails at the same time, and would struggle to get the deliveries done because they were getting interrupted by the hails (or had horrible hail rates because deliveries took them out of the hot zones). It may have worked much better if they didn't comingle the jobs, and had dedicated horus for deliveries separate from giving rides.

reviewmon 8y ago

Reminds me of kozmo.com https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com

samstave 8y ago
I recall buying DVDs from kozmo in 1999 and having them delivered by bike messenger to my office. I was on a flight with the founder in 2000 one time telling them how much I loved it and making suggestions about what is love to see, but also expressing how surprised I was that they could make a profit... They folded soon after... I still remember the last time I bought from them: Ran on DVD

fma 8y ago

It's amusing to me how out of touch executives are. Some executive makes a decision for this and everyone is too scared to tell them it's a stupid idea. This happens where I work, too. They could have had the employees deliver for 10 hours of their 40 hour shift so they aren't exhausted while driving. Have the employees do it during the shift rather than after which is likely during rush hour. Give employees consistent routes they are familiar with. If there's a package to deliver ok that route...great. if not, then do the regular associates job. Company vehicles to reduce burden on your employees who make $11 an hour. Buy some Chevy Bolt that can be charged at Walmart. It's also hatchback so store lots of stuff. Plaster Walmart ads to increase visibility of the service. A clean looking new car will increase branding. This is the largest retailer in the world...don't act like a poor startup.

sumedh 8y ago
> Some executive makes a decision for this and everyone is too scared to tell them it's a stupid idea. Or the executive tells them I am the Big Boss and this will definitely work.
- BEEdwards 8y ago
  And everyone is to scared to say, "yes you're the big boss, but this idea is still dumb and won't work. Let's at least go on linkedin and try to poach at least one executive from amazon flex."
amf12 8y ago
Yeah, this was a great idea but terribly executed by the execs.
dingaling 8y ago
> Have the employees do it during the shift So then you have to have someone else on overlapping schedule to cover that portion of the shift whilst the original worker is away on delivery. But if there are no deliveries then cancel the overlap. And if the deliveries are to occur mid-shift then the overlapper is on a split-shift schedule. Eventually it becomes simpler to handle the deliveries outside the store shifts.

jackconnor 8y ago

Spoiler alert: They didn't pay their employees enough for the deliveries, and these employees ended up averaging about $7/hour to make deliveries. If they fixed this (seemingly) basic problem, I wonder how well this would work.

CydeWeys 8y ago
$7 per hour using their personal vehicles and insurance. And personal insurance might not even cover these accidents.

joering2 8y ago

Gee, who here didn't foreseen an idea of strangers coming to your home to deliver after they can't wait to end their shift already (and go home) won't work. The article mentions billions put into figuring out how to tackle on Amazon success. Here is the plan, free of charge: Ask anyone why they chose Amazon over Wallmart, here is the answer: Both Amazon and Walmart has large range of goods, but Walmart lacks in reviews; offer perks and discounts (on products you have problems to sell) to those "good Wallmarters" who are willing to spend their time reviewing products online and you fix half of the problem. Make reviewing possible only to person who purchase a product from Wallmart to compete with horrible fake reviews that Amazon is plagued with. - Have ONE designated person (or few people) delivering per store and made it their full-time job to deliver. The reasons I hate going to Wallmart are: 1) lack of short-distance parking lots [takes me 10 minutes to find a spot, sorry I'm lazy]. 2) confusion of where a product is [take me extra time to walk and find an isle]. 3) checkout time and lines are ridiculous [being 24-hour open doesn't mean much when there is only one clerk at the night shift, so waiting time is the same at rush hour] - So have that ONE designated person: have their own reserved parking spot, have them handheld access to know where products are, have them skip checkout since products are paid online. Have them smart online app to deliver throughout the day, back and forth as many times as sophisticated algorithm of said app decides its the wise route possible. You welcome, Wallmart!

ghaff 8y ago
It’s not a service I use but my local Walmart is pushing curb side pickup of online orders. So is one of my local grocery chains. It isn’t really a use case that appeals to me and I don’t much like Walmart for food shopping anyway. But that addresses your specific complaints.

theshadowknows 8y ago

Or people could wait a damn day.

cavisne 8y ago

"All sixteen workers who had participated in the program said delivery of five packages would generally take them more than two hours to complete. If a worker drove 10 miles to drop five packages, that would earn them $15.40 in compensation per package and fuel, before overtime pay." They clearly just dont have the density of orders for this to work. Theres videos on youtube of the amazon flex app, a 2 hour shift with a car full of boxes is mostly within a couple of blocks.

ddebernardy 8y ago

If memory serves me well, a few store chains in Europe are exploring approaching this by flipping the problem on its head. Rather than delivering the goods at the customers' houses, they stick to having the local store prep the orders and then having customers show up at a glorified drive-through. Aren't there grocery stores in North America trying that approach? For all they know it might prompt a startup to actually solve the last mile problem for them, in much the same way as there's a startup or three out there that offer restaurant deliveries for places that don't support it out of the box.

kennydude 8y ago

I don't get how this is a major issue. Most UK supermarkets have an online delivery service (even Iceland!) You pick a delivery slot for a certain price (off peak is cheaper) and then choose what you want. They have store assistants with specific trolleys with plastic boxes for each order and fill up as they walk around the store. Boxes get loaded to a specially designed truck and delivered in the time slot. Works pretty well, unless you're this person https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/2sxjiv/tesco_home_delivery_substituted_my_kingsmill_5050/ https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/2sxjiv/tes...

fredoralive 8y ago
This appears to be more about general merchandise rather than groceries, I think the nearest comparison would be Argos's Fast Track delivery option where they seem (never used it myself) to have someone drive over from the nearest store rather than have a central warehouse. Not sure how Argos pays the drivers in their case.
deadbunny 8y ago
Haha, that link reminds me of a substitution I got one time. Frozen garlic cubes were replaced with frozen mixed veg. I thought it was a little odd at the time till the next time I was in the store and noticed the frozen garlic cubes were right next to the frozen mixed veg. So rather than apply logic and grab some other type of easy garlic they just grabbed the thing next to it. I actually facepalmed.

WilliG 8y ago

Sounds good. I'm often order prime package delivery. Only once I had some issues with the delivery service because of wrong postal code. Now I always check my postal code here https://worldpostalcode.com/china/ https://worldpostalcode.com/china/ to avoid such mistakes. Have no complaints at all.