While much of the logistics industry’s efforts to accelerate delivery times focuses on optimizing routes, it turns out that’s not where drivers spend most of their time.
In fact, as much as 75% of their workday is dedicated to navigating not the “last mile” but the last 100 meters—waiting at loading docks, searching for parking, and interacting with customers, said Chazz Sims, chief executive of Wise Systems, a startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that has developed autonomous routing and dispatch software.
Using data and machine-learning tools, the company found that this kind of service time varies widely depending on the time of day, the specific customer, the goods in question, and the delivery person, Sims added. For instance, certain shops get busy serving customers at particular times of the day, or receiving goods from different delivery trucks at others. By spotting those patterns and shifting schedules around, the company was able to cut down delivery times and costs.
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