

To Save Gas, Shoppers Stay Home and Click - nickb
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/19/business/19shop.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

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tptacek
Isn't this only true until the moment retailers start passing shipping costs
through to consumers? Yes, truck rolls to a whole district may have a lower
footprint than 200 round trips in cars, but many of the retailers in this
article are also doing long-haul hops in air freight to distribute their
goods. Isn't oil going to fuck these people too?

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helveticaman
Not as much. A company can figure out its logistics in a way a consumer can't.
Overnight shipping is going to become a lot more expensive, but one-week
shipping probably isn't. And if people start buying everything from home,
there are economies of scale there.

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Tichy
I wonder if todays postal services are the best fit for the coming wave of
online shopping, or if there is an opportunity for a better system. I don't
really know how delivery works these days, though.

In my country, the mailman drives the same route every day and visits every
house. But the trucks for bigger things don't stop everywhere, and I am not
sure if they take the same route every day. For sure they have fancy
algorithms for finding the optimum route. What will distribution look like if
there are lots of big deliveries for every house, every day?

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henning
_Internet_ : serious business.

