Example #1: The final mile industry is too slow to adapt electric vehicles to replace high emissions vehicles.
While there are e-bikes and e-trikes and drone delivery systems, those technologies are only scratching the surface of the final mile delivery industry. The vast majority of deliveries occur in gas-powered vehicles. Some of the barriers for quicker adoption to electric trucks that carry the bulk of local deliveries include: upfront costs of charging stations; drain on the local power grid if a business starts charging dozens of vehicles at a time; many companies use independent contractors who provide their own vehicles and the company has no control over when or if they switch to an EV. How could you speed up the transition?
Example #2: Solve the driver shortage in the final mile industry.
After the pandemic struck, the demand for online shopping and quick product delivery grew tremendously and remains high. As a result, last-mile carriers hired over one million seasonal drivers. But even after the holidays, over 37% of last-mile shipping companies state that their biggest problem is finding qualified drivers. Part of the problem is high turnover. Part of it is competing services like Uber, Lift, UberEats or Instacart. How can companies attract and train more drivers–fast? How can companies reduce high turnover? How can companies make more efficient use of the few drivers they have? Consider new business models or technologies that disrupt traditional training, mobile driver apps and dispatching.
Example #3: Replace single-use packaging for e-commerce deliveries with reusable packaging.
Most products for e-commerce deliveries are shipped in cardboard boxes. In order for e-commerce retailers to switch to reusables, there needs to be a system of tracking reusable packaging, incentivizing consumers to return them, a return mechanism and a “reverse” supply chain to gather them and return them in a loop for reuse. What is your proposed solution?