eBay Causes Royal Mail To Change Operational Model

Another blog I read (this time on the intranet so no hyperlink I'm afraid) raised an interesting point a few days ago. I'd often considered on my long queues in the Post Office weighed down with eBay and Amazon Marketplace dispatches, that they must have boosted Post Office coffers. Odd that something so 'new' as eBay has caused a resurgence in traditional postal services. Well, it turns out that doing so has meant that Royal Mail has had to make some changes.

In the recent past, sending parcels and small packages meant a few major distribution centres , such as catalogue companies, sending out to a wide range of locations. This naturally required large transporters picking the orders up in bulk and, through the delivery chain, transferring them out to increasingly smaller vehicles as they got closer to the delivery point. So, one lorry equated to a few large vans, more smaller vans and quite a lot of cycles.

However, today the rise of eBay has meant that the smaller vans can't cope with package sizes when they pick them up from (scarce) sub Post Offices and post boxes, hence a need to reorganise the delivery/collection fleet. Furthermore, the planned change to parcel size pricing (as opposed to the historial weight measure) is an indication of the ripple effect of eCommerce on traditional service industries.

Well, I thought it was interesting. Because every blog should have a link, here's a vaguely relevant article on the bankruptcy fears for Royal Mail.