Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gruez 547 days ago
>An Amazon delivery car with a bunch of products to deliver is the equivalent of OP filling up his car with purchases when shopping in town.

Right, but if you want something in 2-3 days (which amazon provides), you need to make a dedicated trip. Even if timing wasn't a factor, at best doing a consolidated errand run allows you to visit a handful of stores, whereas an amazon delivery van delivers to dozens of houses in your neighborhood in one trip.
1 comments
themaninthedark 547 days ago
Amazon built up a dedicated logistic network in order to get the 2-3 day delivery time. How does the Carbon Emissions of that factor in?
link
gruez 547 days ago
Is there to believe that logistics network has worse emissions compared to logistics networks for brick and mortar stores? At least for me, most of the amazon packages' tracking shows up as departing from a local warehouse, so I'd imagine most of the fast delivery time comes from pre-positioning goods in warehouses near buyers, rather than shipping packages across the country using planes or whatever.
link
themaninthedark 547 days ago
Most existing retailers did not own or run a private logistics network, they would use XPO, R+L, Old Dominion, etc.

In order to get that amazing fast delivery time, Amazon had to create their own system. The creation of that system, created a large amount of Carbon emissions at it's onset just with the requisite vehicles require to make it happen. It also set off an arms race between logistics enterprises to try and deliver the same performance, leading to further emissions.

>The primary function of Amazon Air is to transport Amazon packages from distant fulfillment centers that are outside of Amazon's local ground linehaul network for a specific area.

They have their own air cargo service for shipping packages between Distribution centers. They wouldn't invest in that unless they had enough volume to make it profitable.

I get that it is easy and convenient but please don't try to claim that it is ecological.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Air

https://www.businesstechweekly.com/online-sales-and-growth/s...

https://www.warehousingandfulfillment.com/warehousing-and-fu...

link