What Do Final Mile Trends Mean for Equipment and Maintenance Managers?
Mercedes Benz vans has developed potential logistics concepts involving electric vans, robots, drones, and smart autonomous loading systems. Photo: Mercedes-Benz
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As urban centers increasingly battle problems with pollution and congestion while e-commerce grows by leaps and bounds, we’ll see changing technologies in last-mile logistics – and changing maintenance challenges.
In a session at the Technology & Maintenance Council’s annual meeting in Atlanta, panelists explored the issue of last-mile delivery trends.
Nick Tempelhoff shared a possible future vision developed by Mercedes-Benz vans, starting with smart, autonomous loading systems, and using drones and small wheeled robots that would deploy from a “mothership” van – one powered by electricity.
In fact, much of the session centered around electric-powered last-mile delivery vehicles, either full battery electric or hybrids.
The near future of last mile delivery
“The writing is on the wall” for alternative powered vehicles in last-mile delivery, said Mike Hasinec of Penske Truck Leasing. “When you look at the routes, at the stop density, the infrastructure is very feasible.”
Already, he said, technologies such as compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas, propane, hybrid and some electric vehicles are in operation. “However, the population is very small and has remained so for many years,” because they are mostly in niche application such as buses and small delivery trucks. OEMs have not heavily pursued alternative power vehicle production, he said, and customers aren’t necessarily willing to buy these vehicles in large numbers, so there are few economies of scale to be had. Leasing companies such as Penske have been able to invest in larger numbers and provide these technologies to fleets.
Tim Dollmeyer, director of technology and engineering for Cummins Electrified Power, showed slides of various hybrid and electric vehicles from the past decade or so – most of which are no longer around. It took …Read the rest of this story
