In today’s world, more and more people order what they want online, and expect such to either be delivered directly to where they are at, or for those that find it more convenient or are precluded for various reasons for having packages dropped off at the door, their package will thereby be delivered to a locker for them to retrieve. To a very large extent, people receiving deliveries don’t much care about the logistics of how the package is delivered, and who that package is delivered by, but pretty much just want their stuff to arrive on-time and undamaged.
So then, the thing about deliveries for these companies that need to get their goods to the customer is to well understand the best logistics for achieving this in an efficient and effective manner. Not too surprisingly, while there are advantages to a company when they utilize their own employees and therefore their own company vehicles, this isn’t necessarily going to be the most efficient way to accomplish such, when it comes down to the “last mile” which is basically that step in which the goods are being delivered to the customer’s house. That is to say, companies are usually quite efficient at getting goods to arrive at a central warehouse but the cost of getting that particular good to its final destination, is something that can be not only cost prohibitive but also time consuming. This is why so many companies prefer the usage of contractors, of which these people making those last mile deliveries, aren’t actually employees of the subject corporation, but rather are independent contractors to them. This signifies that the delivery person picking up the goods to be delivered to homes, are going to use their own vehicle to make those deliveries and get paid per the company formula, which will often take into account, the distance so traveled, the overall price of the goods, as well as the weight of the goods, amongst other assorted factors to arrive at their compensation pay.
For instance, Walmart, has a program in which a message is sent to the customer on deliveries, that states, “This shipment is coming from your local club, will be delivered by a driver in their own vehicle and may arrive unpackaged.” For those customers that even bother to read that note, they might easily conclude that the management at Walmart at some point during the day, got together with their employees, to thereby find someone that desired to leave Walmart a bit early in order to make some deliveries on behalf of Walmart -- but here’s the thing, we have to recognize that a behemoth corporation such as Walmart is not going to do that at all, instead they will follow the given written procedures for that corporation which isn’t going to involve some employee leaving early for the day in order to make deliveries for Walmart. Rather, what is gong to happen, instead, is that Walmart will outsource that work to a contractor that is not employed by Walmart to make that delivery, and that person will actually be driving their own vehicle.
Indeed, deliveries that come to our door, may or may not come to us via USPS, UPS, FedEx and the like, but instead will come to us from regular folks, working in what is known as the gig economy, in which, one way or another it is fair to state that the corporation contracting them for this work, knows well how to structure their compensation in a way that is favorable to that company and not so favorable to that delivery driver.