CROSSING THE LAST MILE

STARTUPS AND STALWARTS ALIKE ARE OVERCOMING THE OBSTACLES BETWEEN THE STORE AND YOUR DOOR.

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS PHYSICAL retail. Then Bezos said, “Let there be Prime,” and there was two-day delivery. And we saw that it was good. Since that moment almost 20 years ago, customer expectations for getting orders quickly, correctly, and with pinpoint accurate tracking have only risen. And the biggest impediment to meeting them remains the socalled last mile, getting deliveries from the orders’ final distribution hub to the customer. It’s the priciest, most fraught leg of a product’s journey, but also where some of the most exciting logistics work is being done.

One of the least appreciated hurdles is poor mapping. There are millions of previously uncharted microregions, such as apartment complexes and college campuses. Beans.ai, which officially launched in fall 2021, has been developing maps for these hard-to-navigate areas. It’s already plotted about 12 million locations (more than 70% of all hard-to-locate U.S. multi-dwelling addresses), and delivery giants Fedex, Ubereats, and Instacart use it to assist their delivery staff. Air travel—specifically drone delivery—is increasingly becoming an option to get products to customers faster than traditional means. Zipline, which got its start delivering blood via drone in Rwanda, is now working with U.S. health providers to air-drop medications to customers. And Walmart, long a supply chain innovator, has rolled out drone delivery in six states via partnerships with Droneup, Flytrex, and Zipline.

The future of last-mile delivery, says Bart De Muynck, chief industry officer at the freightmanagement software startup Project44 and a former Gartner VP of research, is “a van goes around the neighborhood, and instead of that guy going from one place to another, there could be four or five drones on that vehicle.” And on the seventh drone, perhaps they will rest. —LT