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.
