Re: Forget Next day Deliveries (the next step) !
 

Thats what I thought....I'd love to see one deliver a telly.

Re: Forget Next day Deliveries (the next step) !
 

Have you factored in that the van can take many parcels at once, including those larger than the copter can handle? The purchase and running costs of the average van are quite low if you factor in the fact that the purchase cost is divided by the number of parcels the van will take in it's lifetime (which will be in the tens of thousands). Maintenance and tax can be divided by the amount of parcels taken in a year (which can still be thousands), as can the salary of the driver. The cost of fuel can be divided by the amount of parcels the van can carry on one tank. It also does not need to return to the depot after every journey, which will reduce fuel consumption and in the long term, maintenance costs.

Personally, I think Amazon did it for one reason, and one reason only. Publicity. Think about it. They've got the media all over the US and UK talking about it, and all they had to shell out is a few bucks for a copter and a few cents for an Amazon PrimeAir sticker..

Re: Forget Next day Deliveries (the next step) !
 

Yes but a van also sits around unused much of the time, as it require a manual driver on a salary to operate, further there's costs of fuel, insurance, and all that too, while a drone could also deliver thousands of packages in a year.

Furthermore, said van can do far fewer 30-minute deliveries than it can doing a standard multi-package run that takes several hours.

There's far too many variables to really make a sensible comparison, but the only other company doing 30-minute deliveries right now are Craplin, and they charge around the price of a taxi, because well, they basically use taxis. And even then, those costs are barely more than standard delivery charges if you live close by.

Re: Forget Next day Deliveries (the next step) !
 

I did factor that in, but you also need to factor in that any reasonably efficient courier operation will have decent logistics and route management systems in place. These are designed to keep the amount of time each vehicle is off road to a minimum, and also to ensure that the route taken by each vehicle is the shortest it can be to encompass all the delivery points.

Actually the point you have made there brings to mind another problem Amazon would have if they are planning to offer this service country wide. They would need at least one depot within 30 minutes flight time of every building they are planning to deliver to. They don't, and a major reason that they can offer lower prices than shops is that they don't have a lot of buildings to rent (or buy), maintain and staff. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon....nd_warehousing), Amazon have seven operational warehouses in the UK, with 3 more planned. I suspect those warehouses cost a lot less to maintain and run than the several hundred smaller warehouses they would need to maintain a 30 minute delivery time to most of the country. They possibly cost less to run than the couple of dozen or so that would be needed to cover the major towns and cities.

The extra warehousing would be an extra cost to Amazon because they don't have those facilities in place. Maplin do not have this extra cost simply because they only offer the service where they have shops nearby, so are paying the cost anyway.

Re: Forget Next day Deliveries (the next step) !
 

Umm I'm pretty sure the ad currently refers to their US operations only, nothing to do with the UK at all.

Re: Forget Next day Deliveries (the next step) !
 

Which only makes the logistical problems worse. They would need many more warehouses to cover the US than they would the UK.

Re: Forget Next day Deliveries (the next step) !
 

They also already have more.

It was only ever intended to be offered within a 10 mile radius.