Re: Amazon incoming ...
 

question for Ozzie Eagle or others with industry insite.

What do delivery drivers aspire to earn? Forget status of contractor or employee. What are they ideally needing as a liveable wage in Melbourne. Based on a 40 hour week?

UPS are quoting 16 drop offs per hour.

Here in Auckland its 8 to 12 per hour.

How about Melbourne

Re: Amazon incoming ...
 

Aus Post figures are supposed to be 22 per hour, which is unachievable.Hence the chucking of parcels. Back in the year 2000 I was delivering regularly 200 parcels per day as a parcel driver. Some where bulk drops, but the vast majority were door knocks. I'd say the wage people would be aiming for as delivery drivers on 40 hours per week would be somewhere between 55 to 65K.... The contract drivers earn way less than this. Current Aus Post Contractors were handling upto 270 parcels a day, until the chucking got out of hand, now they are restricted to 180 per day top whack. There is at least a 90 minute to 2 hours set up time on top of this.

I'd say the Contract drivers would be taking home less than 40K per year.... they do get their van tax free and running costs on top of that figure. There again, they don't get paid holidays, paid sickdays, or superannuation contributions. AFAIK the current rate is somewhere between 1.10 and 1.20 per parcel. With those drivers sometimes subbing out to friends and family at 60 cents per parcel.

I'm so bloody glad I got out of parcel driving and onto night shift at Aus Post. Twas by far the worst job I've ever had. That's including key punch operating paid by Key Stroke amongst a whole heap of filipinos which I did part time in the early 90's. Parcel driving for me was the most soul destroying job I've had. Hated it and can't believe I managed to stick with it for 6 horrible years.

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But mate you are swanning around the gaudy pink end of town with your sticky paws on a Victorian terrace...

I've had poor roles here which served their purpose...life often gives us challenges..

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The choice to be contractor versus employee imposed by AUS POST versus personal desire to make more money?

Staggered by 22 that's one every 3 minutes :ohmy:

In a business we are creating (hence the question above) we have demarcated loading and delivery.

Delivery drivers go by loaded route planner and consignment list is auto loaded as customer boxes register against defined RFID location readers. So when they arrive at a customers location the App on their Ipad shows where in the vehicle to retrieve and details about the customers preferences.

We were assuming a $70k to $90k range for drivers

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And that's the point.

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The whole thing in Victoria shifted from Aus Post-employment to contract. which meant penalty payments, super, sickpay, holidays were lost. They actually gave all of us the option to have first go at our own contracts....Not one driver that I'm aware of in Victoria took it up. They knew what was coming and sought employment in other areas of Aus Post. I'd been through the process before when they contracted out Meter Reading at the Gas and Fuel and saw the dramatic decline in wages and conditions and extra work load that came with that. The meter readers lost at least 40pct in wages and condtions, possibly 60pct.



Back when I was doing it, it was rare to get a parcel larger than 15Kgs and very few of those as well. It was mostly items from 1kgs to 5kgs. Although there were a few dozen bottles of wine onboard as well. Also we would only do one postcode at a time, so not a large amount of ground to cover either. I had the same run for all of that time, so knew it inside out. What "average" size items you're talking about?

As for RFID cant you use google maps, because I personally am thinking about a couple of ideas that I have that would involve not as yet built apps for delivery etc that would involve tracking of parcels live "Uber" style. Which could mean people actually come to you on occasion, they would certainly be ready for delivery with the system I'm thinking of.

Also got a great "adjacent' idea for final front door delivery, which I'm going to hang onto for now. I haven't seen it anywhere else yet and it's beyond the parcel locker boxes or automated slots in front doors idea. In fact it's a whole new way of looking at delivery. Plus it runs all hours, within reason that is, that's between the delivery person and the recipient. I dont think there is anywhere near enough automated communication between the final delivery person and the recipient and I think that's the key to final stage delivery, that's beyond drones and anything else physically automated people are hung up on.


BTW many Posties are now delivering as many as 120 scannable small parcels per day..... They are very close to full capacity already..... Something has got to give. Lot's are working 12 hour days continuously. They are up on those wages you quote and beyond.

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Almost :) Not a Terrace but one of these..... Detached Victorian Weatherboard. I was really surprised recently when I realised that the house I live in here is older than the Victorian house I was raised in for the first 18 years of my life in Forest Hill london. There's only a couple of years in it, but it was still a pleasant feeling when I found out.

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/77/7b/68/7...-exteriors.jpg

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Fundamentally route planning off the shelf works incorrectly from customer perspective. It focuses on ideal route from providers point of view and requests customer to oblige.

Our route planning works from customer perspective (hence vast investment in software development) Customer chooses their slot (15 minutes) and system works back to facilitate that delivery.

RFID in our instance is a readable tag which associates a customers box with their order reference. So customer boxes are auto loaded into the delivery vehicle and the system reads stores advises driver of location. At customers location the onboard GPS provides the proof of delivery as the customer box is removed from vehicle - system records movement away from RFID reader so its matched with GPS location and time/dated.

We believe the focus is on time saving using technology so the driver/front person can spend quality time interacting with customer.

During delivery the onboard cameras feed direct status to customers enroute. GPD location plus visual a bit more sophisticated than Dominos as list of customer drop offs (not exact addresses due to privacy). Cameras cut out 2 mins before a customers drop off. SMS sent at that 2 min pre arrival automatically by system. Any delays system updates all customers enroute with revised estimated time of arrival (if delay will result in greater than 15 minutes).

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That is where it's at :) Nice one. I believe there should be a way of automating this with all current barcodes and or QR codes from all providers and hoping to get my high achieving youngest tech-savvy daughter and her brilliant network of Melbournes young brightest to get behind this my end. Scanning current AP codes into the system via Android or iPhone and letting the software do the rest, which involves live tracking of one's parcel and a 3-minute pre-call text to let them know it's approaching and where they want the parcel placed or to be ready to answer the door.

Just hope I get the retirement time to get my head totally into it. I've definitely got the contacts amongst some of the head contractors at APost, in my region at least. I'd say that's all I need, the barcode and an input system and the delivery people onboard, which they will be as it makes their job far easier.


Then theres the advertising revenue from the apps :sneaky:

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That's what I meant! And very nice too. Much better than a place on a new estate...cheers

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Can I just point out that 'ozzie' wants them to "stand by you bed" and 'stuck' wants 'quality time'. You seem to be talking very different qualitative models.


PS 'Stuck' read the beginning of Snowcrash since the shape of your solutions sounds very similar.

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Problem with some of the models is when cust can't make up mind when they can deliver or get called away by circumstance on final approach.....incovenience for driver....and there is no fallback option granted

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good point

solved by communication
- return to base to await customer.
- return to customer at end of run

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We estimated today, that the average value of the 1,000's of parcels we handle a day at our facility would be around 15/20 dollars at the very max. I'm assuming yours are a totally different kettle of fish. Which may go some way to the kind of equipment, or lack thereof, that we are provided with.

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I've another pretty unique solution. Not heard of it before. It's the ace up my sleeve. A whole new approach, AFAIK. Just waiting to give it my 100 pct attention then I'll get some people together. This is for Postie size parcels BTW. Nothing over 5kgs. Which would be 85pct in volume or more of what AP handle.