Sep 27, 2021
Last Mile Innovation with Emma Cosgrove
Emma Cosgrove and Joe Lynch discuss last mile innovation. Emma is a Senior Reporter on the transportation desk at Business Insider, a global news and lifestyle publication with hundreds of journalists in London, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Singapore and beyond.
About Emma Cosgrove
Emma Cosgrove is a Senior Reporter on Business Insider's transportation team. She covers logistics with a focus on ecommerce. From warehouse technology to delivery labor, she tries to spread a deeper understanding of the people and systems that bring goods to our doorsteps with ever-increasing speed. Emma previously covered supply chains and food and agriculture technology for Supply Chain Dive and AgFunder News. She was a freelance food industry reporter for several years with bylines in The Atlantic, The Counter, and Edible Manhattan Magazine. She started her journalism career as a financial reporter in Beirut, Lebanon.
About The Business Insider
Business Insider is a global news and lifestyle publication with hundreds of journalists in London, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Singapore and beyond. Their mission is to inform and inspire you with news and stories you want and need to know. They strive to leave you with something valuable every time you finish reading, watching, or listening to our work. They know that we are just one of many publications seeking your attention in an increasingly busy world.
Key Takeaways: Last Mile Innovation
- Emma Cosgrove is a Senior Reporter covering Logistics at Business Insider. Emma frequently writes about the innovation and innovators in the last mile space.
- In the podcast interview, Emma describes how the explosive growth of ecommerce has transformed the once sleepy last mile space into a booming market that has shippers searching for partners and capacity.
- Some highlights of Joe and Emma’s discussion below:
- Traditionally, last mile shipping has been serviced by UPS, FedEx, and United States Postal Service (USPS).
- UPS and FedEx experienced significant growth because of ecommerce, but not all of the business has been good business. FedEx stopped working with Amazon in 2019. UPS is reexamining their ecommerce business and pursuing a strategy of “better, not bigger.”
- Even though Amazon is not a small package company, their logistics services has rapidly grown to support their ecommerce business.
- Large shippers requiring last mile logistics and transportation service have struggled to find capacity. A variety of new businesses have emerged to fill the void.
- The FRONTdoor Collective (FDC) has created the first micro-last mile delivery network with the capacity to cover 90% of residences and businesses in the US and Canada.
- Roadie is a crowdsourced delivery platform. Roadie works with consumers, small businesses and big global brands across virtually every industry to provide a faster, cheaper, more scalable solution for scheduled, same-day and urgent delivery. With more than 200,000 active drivers nationwide, Roadie reaches more than 11,000 cities and 20,000 zip codes – the largest local same-day delivery footprint in the nation.
- There are dozens of other last mile logistics providers who are lesser known, but still a very important part of the last mile market.
- The direct to consumer (DTC) market is still growing and there will be growing pains that last mile shippers must address like sustainability, reverse logistics, and the profitability in this interesting new space.