The Future of Shipping

Shipping has seen major changes alongside advances in technology at each step.  From the time when cargo was hauled by horse and carriage to now there has been a lot of thought and planning put into the logistics of getting goods from one place to another.  The methods for packaging fragile goods to be shipped have evolved over time too as a better understanding of how package design can protect them.  Shipping has seen a major leap in growth with the advent of online shopping.  As online shopping has grown, so has the need for shipping.  In the U.S. alone there are at least 191 million online buyers.

As shipping has increased over the last couple decades so has the speed of it.  Before the average time for a package was 1-2 weeks.  Now people are able to expect their package within a week if not two days.  Despite this increase in speed, the cost of shipping hasn't really gone up either; in fact free shipping is incredibly common.  Part of this is due to economies of scale.  As more and more shipping is being done the shipping companies can reduce their rates because they have more packages to deliver in one trip to roughly the same area.  A lot of companies have started eating the shipping costs too because it is a way for them to vie with competitors for best costs.  Data shows if shipping costs made the total too high 54% of people would abandon their cart and 44% would abandon their cart if they didn't qualify for free shipping.

Shipment tracking options available to companies today are both more plentiful and far more reliable than they were in the past.  Computers and the internet allow us to track packages at each step of their journey allowing us to know almost precisely the minute when they are delivered.  Twenty years ago that would have seemed nearly impossible.  Now it seems shipping is taking the next leap forward with technology.  Amazon is developing drones which they hope to release within the next few years that can deliver orders within 30 minutes of clicking the check-out button.

The challenges facing this concept are many, one of the largest ones being the FAA and the federal government.  Last month the FAA finally gave approval for a drone concept Amazon had submitted but that model was already obsolete.  The R&D team is moving at such a rapid pace that each month the drones are changing.  Because of the inability to test effectively in the U.S., Amazon has begun testing overseas.  The other major question that everyone must consider is how safe and how comfortable will we be with small drones flying over our houses on a regular basis.  How will these drones handle rough weather and what if someone can hack into them to reroute them? 

The future of shipping appears to certainly be an interesting one.