UPS in PDX
 

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Just A Car Guy: Portland is trying a pilot program to see about electric scooters used for delivery... no doubt to bring down the additional emissions from Amazon and app deliveries
Pilot program has a single vehicle. Compare with Arcimoto Deliverator.

Looks like it holds more, goes slower (not an issue on a university campus), but the trike vs reverse trike is a safety concern, especially since it will be on roadways...

The UPS trike also looks wider and will take up more space, so using bike lanes, bike paths and multipurpose paths might not be as easy as it would for an Arcimoto Deliverator.

At least they are trying? I think the easy slide off and on are important design issues for this to make it feasible for UPS. Not sure even if they Deliverator had a easily swappable box if it would make sense, due to the much smaller capacity...

The comparison was an afterthought.

I thought it was interesting that the cargo trailer has four modules. For one trike. It would enable 4x the capacity at the one location.

I've suggested to Arcimoto a four wheel drive, four wheel steering [autonomous] Deliverator. Like the Dannar 400. They're too busy right now.

I used to do USPS deliveries to all the dorms on our campus at the University of Montana and we just drove the giant 2ton box van down all the bike lanes and sidewalks. I always thought it was hilarious. Get your bike out of my postal road!

Why is the e-bike rider specifically a female?

... in partnership with PSU explains everything. It doesn't bother me that they assigned a gender to the job, but I do wonder why they went out of their way to make it more awkward to read.

I've been using non-gendered pronouns to refer to generic people when speaking generically for as long as I can remember.

Now it will be weird if they hire a man because there is only 1 vehicle.

Interesting concept, but it seems to increase human labor (more trips to reload cargo), not decrease it. Costs go up with increasing labor. Always like to see new ideas and experiments though. Hopefully they accurately document their findings.

Long story short: PDX

Here's a story about a traditional feminine role. AIER:Let’s Talk about Ghastly Dishwashers. It's my thread and I'll wander if I want to.

I like the pedals that will never be used.

I don't know what kind of volume PSU gets for packages but from what I know about the UofM parcel volume, that container will work for a single dorm building then need reloaded. Why just not take the big truck from building to building?

Because a college campus is a small, safe, high profile place to work the kinks out of the system and learn how to properly use it. Worst case, you get kudos for trying. Best case, there are lots of places where the big brown truck isn't the most appropriate method.

And some places, I know it is not common, will actually ticket the trucks when they double park or park in places they shouldn't be.

If it works out, but they need to get the packages out faster, then getting another person or three on more eBikes is pretty easily scale.

Also something to remember, some cities are going ICE free in the not distant future. A big truck with a big EV battery is expensive.

Four ebikes, even if $10k each, still less than $100,000 EV delivery van (see Amazon order to Rivian).

You need to get the packages out faster PER EMPLOYEE. The hourly wage and benefits trumps all other costs by a huge factor. With today's health care, retirement, workman's comp, etc you are usually better off working employees overtime rather than hiring more as the benefit costs are fixed per employee and cost more than time and 1/2 hourly wage. So each delivery guy needs to be fast. It's one thing delivering $30 envelopes in a big city like bicycle curriers do, but if you have real packages like UPS caries, you can't be wasting time loading, delivering a few, going back, loading, delivering a few. The best delivery vehicle will hold your entire days work in one trip. Loaded one time, driven across town one time, and spend all day emptying it, with one trip back to be reloaded for the next day.

And if a driver spends more time looking for a parking space to unload packages... if that is even a consideration. I know the campus I am near, they park and have to pull a cart/dolly to move all the packages, and if they spend more time walking than in their truck, employee efficiency is WAY down. an ebike is much faster, less tiring, and probably more efficient in time than a truck trying to do the same route.

Here, because the size of the campus is fixed (in the middle of a town/city), as the university adds more buildings, that usually means less parking and more people that need to park (there are less parking spaces than employees). Where do you park a delivery truck?

And, this is not even that big of a campus nor city. I cannot imagine what it is like in places like the Bay Area, LA, Chicago, New York, DC, etc.

And if that dropoff of the trailer is done in the future by an autonomous vehicle, then doing local delivery with an ebike makes even more sense.

It is a pilot program for now, so they are probably just researching it to see if it will work or not.

Shouldn't a campus have a loading dock for deliveries, and a shipping/receiving department to distribute parcels?

Some buildings have a loading dock, but not all, and some buildings are residential buildings for students, some are classroom buildings, some are performance buildings (several of those). Museums, libraries, admin buildings, IT buildings, library annexes, media restoration and digital preservation. Oh, and restaurants, stores, and a few businesses that lease space on the campus...

Not all of those buildings have docks, nor is there room for every building to have a dock on a campus that has grown for almost 200 years.

Some of these buildings are over 100 years old and you cannot even drive a car to anymore. The campus has been and remains very bike friendly, so getting around in an even large cargo bike is pretty easy.

Fastest fast food delivery on campus is by bicycle.

In this modern age, delivery should be via tubes, not big trucks.

Well the reason I ask about a shipping/receiving department is that I worked on a large campus (manufacturing facility). It was about 5 miles to walk the perimeter of the property with 60 buildings. There is 1 building dedicated to shipping/receiving. If things need to go to other buildings, it goes via appropriate means, from hand delivery, to a panel van, to a forklift, to a golf cart.

Our campus has their own receiving building that then separates and distributes to each department. We just deliver a load to each dorm and a load to that one office. Their distribution center has 1 or maybe 2 Grumman LLVs like the Post Office but with high roofs and A/C added . The university's trucks can go and park wherever they want like their maintenance trucks do. Things like parking is never a concern for the Post Office, we park where we want to an extent UPS and FedEx do too. People just want their stuff and will put up with a lot to avoid having to drive down to the Post office or distribution center to get their loot.

Campus post office is the single correct answer.

That stupid rickshaw just needs a coolie hat for the purple-haired pseudo-woman pedaling away for verisimilitude.

(Maybe the campus will replace floor-cleaning machines with an army of indentured servants from the sub-continent to scrub, scrub those floors down on their knees. Pipe methane from the ****ters to replace street lights and another army of lamp-lighters).

This is naught but advertising.
Your tax money? Ha!

Is UPS also reviving German two-stroke diesel-engined airplanes?
Updated Ford Tri-motors?

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