What Does Nuro Mean For eCommerce

Isaiah Bollinger

Isaiah Bollinger

Domino’s recently launched Nuro for its self-driving delivery initiatives. It has now been in pilot for major brands like Walmart, CVS, Domino’s, Kroger, and Chipotle. This shows there is great interest in automated delivery, especially for last-mile which is often the most expensive.

If companies like Nuro can drastically reduce the cost of last-mile delivery this will completely change the game for eCommerce.

Why Is Last-Mile So Expensive? How Will Nuro Reduce The Costs? Well, Nuro can help solve all these issues by reducing labor costs and the high costs of fuel for these problems.

nuro self driving car automated delivery ecommerce

1. Last Mile Is Slow

The last few miles are slow. You can’t speed on the highway in the suburbs. Most homes might require a mile or several miles through slow roads, lights, stop signs etc.

Nuro could drastically reduce the costs of that last-mile delivery because it’s a small nonhuman operated device with a low cost of delivery for the last few miles that a big truck would cost much more while paying a driver and gas.

2. More stops lead to more idling and downtime

When you have to deliver the final package you may be stuck at traffic lights, waiting for someone to answer the door or other things that stop you from actually driving. The amount of time wasted on the final deliveries and going from final delivery to final delivery is much more time-consuming than delivering one large load of goods in bulk.

3.  Failed deliveries

Failed delivery is probably more common than you might think. There are a number of reasons why this is such a big problem:

  • The customer is not expecting a delivery (no prior notification).
  • The customer is not home due to late delivery (inefficient planning or unexpected events).
  • No options of delivery scheduling (no time windows).
  • Mistaken address of the customer.

4. Final routes are usually more complex

The final routes are often out of the way and not convenient for other drop-off packages. This means you might go to a dead end and have to go back miles to get back on track to other deliveries. Its a much more complicated way of optimizing routes.

5. Returns, refunds, or discounts

It’s one thing to deliver to a warehouse or store that will almost never return a large order, but one or two orders can easily be returned. If the item is broken or has an issue you might get a return. The last-mile delivery can easily result in returns or discounts and end up costing more than the delivery itself!

In Summary

Nuro provides an autonomous way to massively reduce the costs of this by offering no labor costs and massively reduced fuel costs. They can also provide scheduling and alerts to reduce the likelihood of failed deliveries.

The possibilities are endless when you think of the potential of a 24×7 service that doesn’t require manpower.

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