[lawnchair]

There's other serious inefficiencies with the UPS model. When I get things by e-commerce, they are seriously overpacked. Layers of cardboard and foam are the norm. This is getting to be less so (I want a shirt, it's now likely to come in an oversized envelope, not a box). Shipping to a depot (by railcar?) could be done with reusable barcoded crates.

For another, the package delivery firms are having some issues with the e-commerce boom. Ten years ago, most deliveries were to companies. Now, making residential deliveries, they're lucky to deliver half their packages on the first attempt. Even shifting delivery to nights and weekends doesn't help much. This leads to a lot of repeated stop-and-go traffic.

The alternatives are a "depot" model, previously mentioned, and a locked package-sized dropbox at every house. The former seems more efficient.

[MD]

Here we are reinventing the parcel post system