Comment by pawsforthought | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pawsforthought | Hacker News Reader

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To quote directly from the project FAQ:

> Efficient micro-distribution in urban areas is a nice idea, but so far there has not been a single city logistics project that has functioned in reality. How is CST city logistics going to fare any better?

> In the CST system, the goods are already sorted and bundled by destination when transported in the tunnel. This bundling process means that they are optimally prepared for the subsequent micro-distribution process. At the hub, the goods simply need to be loaded onto appropriate vehicles – depending on the size, volume and destination, these are courier bikes, motorbikes or small delivery vans. This guarantees coordinated deliveries to sales outlets and end consumers, rather than each supplier delivering their goods individually.

Unbundling from containers to pallets only needs to happen at one end of the tunnel — at an out-of-town logistics center as a sibling comment suggests.

> This guarantees coordinated deliveries to sales outlets and end consumers, rather than each supplier delivering their goods individually.

It's worth noting that most companies delivering pallets don't typically deliver their goods by themselves - usually for palletised goods there is a "pallet network" where the pallets are transferred to a central hub and then consolidated onto a mixed multi-customer load to go to a particular territory. In the UK these pallet networks are usually membership organisations formed by various regional transport operators (see Pallex as an example). As a member you will typically pick up any goods from companies in your local area that want nationwide delivery, deliver those goods to the central hub, and then in return are given a mixed-load of goods to be delivered back to your postcode area. The bigger scale a single network has the cheaper deliveries are (because they will therefore be picking up and delivering the same volume to a smaller territory, so the 'inter-drop distance' is smaller).

Similarly there are van networks, where if you want to deliver something by van from the south of the country to the north of the country, you can give this to a third party logistics provider who will then consolidate your goods with other providers at a hub, place a mixed lorry-load of goods up to the north of the country, and will then organise a mixed-customer van route from the hub.

This effectively seems like a pallet network without the central hub. A great idea - but the idea that all suppliers deliver their goods individually is inaccurate.

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