Sainsburys to trial bike deliveries : electric assistance this time

[Postboxer]

I was thinking what the bulkiest item would be, could well be the biggest pack of toilet roll, heaviest is probably water, either water cooler bottles, which hold 19 litres, or multipacks of smaller bottles, won't people put orders in just to watch?

[tomsumner49]

Where is the bike parked for the delivery - on the pavement?
Interesting that Sainsbury's think they can offer a quicker delivery service by bike than van.

For our delivery they parked in the road right outside. In a van they might have been halfway down the street given all the cars parked on both sides - that probably adds up to a reasonable time saving over a few deliveries.

I think it's going to be the volume not necessarily the weight that's the problem PLUS if the bikes need a fridge too (if deciding to do temp controlled items which takes up space and remove capacity as well as adding weight overall to the unloaded vehicle.

The rear box on this bike was some sort of coolbox, the ice cream was still frozen!

[pwa]

When one of my neighbours has a Tesco delivery he gets, as a rough guess, half a dozen crates. The van driver will temporarily block the street for a couple of minutes if necessary, though usually he finds a parking space nearby. There is no way a bike could deliver that load, even if we were not four miles from the Tesco the van comes from. A bike would only make sense if the deliveries were small and very local.

I asked the Tesco driver how much stuff he carries in the van and the answer was about 0.6 Tonne. And that is for about 20 customers, so you can do the maths.

[thirdcrank]

Perhaps they could use the van like a mother ship. Driver parks where he can then a load of cyclists on zero hours contracts zip to and fro, doing the final delivery.

[MikeF]

Perhaps they could use the van like a mother ship. Driver parks where he can then a load of cyclists on zero hours contracts zip to and fro, doing the final delivery.

That's exactly how Royal Mail used to work - round here any way. Now it's vans everywhere and some trolleys but not bicycles any more.

[MikeF]

When one of my neighbours has a Tesco delivery he gets, as a rough guess, half a dozen crates. The van driver will temporarily block the street for a couple of minutes if necessary, though usually he finds a parking space nearby. There is no way a bike could deliver that load, even if we were not four miles from the Tesco the van comes from. A bike would only make sense if the deliveries were small and very local.

I asked the Tesco driver how much stuff he carries in the van and the answer was about 0.6 Tonne. And that is for about 20 customers, so you can do the maths.

But if you were 4 miles away in inner London (where it is being piloted) things would be very different. You can also do maths on that, which I presume Sainsbury's are doing.

[Cunobelin]

Yep saw that but didn't want to appear I was looking at her le..... .......dang! .

Am I old, past it and senile...... and very very sad?


I must admit that by the time I noticed the legs, I had spotted the trike, the lack of electrical assistance, no hub gear, the fact that is was carrying food/beer and wondered how secure the plate/ place mat on top was!

[The utility cyclist]

When one of my neighbours has a Tesco delivery he gets, as a rough guess, half a dozen crates. The van driver will temporarily block the street for a couple of minutes if necessary, though usually he finds a parking space nearby. There is no way a bike could deliver that load, even if we were not four miles from the Tesco the van comes from. A bike would only make sense if the deliveries were small and very local.

I asked the Tesco driver how much stuff he carries in the van and the answer was about 0.6 Tonne. And that is for about 20 customers, so you can do the maths.

My son was a van driver then supervisor then driver manager for sainsbury's, the vans would be balanced between 10 and 25 deliveries with a small van having a 900kg max load but again the weight wasn't the issue and was never got close too, it was all about the volume taken up and balancing distance/geographic area so vans weren't criss-crossing too much.
6 crates is still a fair amount of shopping though, equivalent to 24 half full bags I reckon as they don't fill them anywhere near the same as a customer would.
I know of plenty of deliveries that my son would tell me about where people would get a delivery that wasn't even a full crate so plenty of scope for deliveries by bike.

[RickH]

I don't think it has been linked to (Apologies if it has already). If you haven't seen it, his is the link from bit about it in the latest Cycleclips email.

bikebiz - Sainsbury's rolls out e-cargobike delivery trial

[Cyril Haearn]

Perhaps they could use the van like a mother ship. Driver parks where he can then a load of cyclists on zero hours contracts zip to and fro, doing the final delivery.

That's exactly how Royal Mail used to work - round here any way. Now it's vans everywhere and some trolleys but not bicycles any more.

ups does that in town, there is a second person on board
Could be quite a good job, a lot of walking with a trolley
Pay is quite good too

[Cunobelin]

Could you say that Sainsburys have decided to bite the "Bullitt"

[Airsporter1st]

Whoever has has planned this initial test, they can know little about cycling: surely, the first consideration - as others have implied - is the total weight of the order rather than the number of items.

We know stuff can be delivered by bike because it's been done before, and suitably motivated people can shift a huge amount by bike, but that doesn't mean it will work for long if the people riding the bikes are properly paid and treated. Some time ago, I read an article by Archie Norman, the business guru responsible for rescuing ASDA from imminent ruin. He made the point that customers doing their own shopping save supermarkets a lot of money and a supermarket doing that work for them is very expensive. He pointed out IIRC that what we are seeing now is just companies trying to build up market share in this sector of the grocery trade and to make it profitable, they must eventually charge an economic rate. In other words, people who go to the supermarket and shove a trolley round are presently cross-subsiding the internet shoppers.

It's funny how the problems of the big supermarkets are all blamed on the so-called discounters, whose main attraction for me is that you can get in and out with the minimum delay and no gimmicks (like employing latter-day Granvilles.)

(When I was checking what I had typed, I saw I had put "git in and out..." That's me, grumpy old git, but I'm a customer and so often right.

I think it's going to be the volume not necessarily the weight that's the problem PLUS if the bikes need a fridge too (if deciding to do temp controlled items which takes up space and remove capacity as well as adding weight overall to the unloaded vehicle.

So whilst extreme something like 20x9 rolls of toilet paper, 20x5l vegetable oil is going to be a non starter so they'll need to use the volumetric weight system to work out which deliveries are possible.

Week before last I bought 6x9 loo rolls plus some smaller stuff and even with a 70L rucksack plus 50L panniers I had to leave a single 9 roll pack behind. The following week I bought 10kg sack of rice, 2x5l vege oil, 3l milk, 4x450g sauces, 3x500g spread, 1kg pork chops, 2 bag of flour plus the all important bags of midget gems, I could have got another 3x5l vege oil in the rucksack on top of the rice but 30kg net load up the 7% slope back home was more than enough.
I hope it takes off but think they need to look at the bikes used for deliveries which are in use elsewhere in the world that can take the bulk and decide if it's just ambient.

Sorry, but I have to ask - why would you want to buy in excess of 5 gallons of vegetable oil in one go????

[Cunobelin]

Whoever has has planned this initial test, they can know little about cycling: surely, the first consideration - as others have implied - is the total weight of the order rather than the number of items.

We know stuff can be delivered by bike because it's been done before, and suitably motivated people can shift a huge amount by bike, but that doesn't mean it will work for long if the people riding the bikes are properly paid and treated. Some time ago, I read an article by Archie Norman, the business guru responsible for rescuing ASDA from imminent ruin. He made the point that customers doing their own shopping save supermarkets a lot of money and a supermarket doing that work for them is very expensive. He pointed out IIRC that what we are seeing now is just companies trying to build up market share in this sector of the grocery trade and to make it profitable, they must eventually charge an economic rate. In other words, people who go to the supermarket and shove a trolley round are presently cross-subsiding the internet shoppers.

It's funny how the problems of the big supermarkets are all blamed on the so-called discounters, whose main attraction for me is that you can get in and out with the minimum delay and no gimmicks (like employing latter-day Granvilles.)

(When I was checking what I had typed, I saw I had put "git in and out..." That's me, grumpy old git, but I'm a customer and so often right.

I think it's going to be the volume not necessarily the weight that's the problem PLUS if the bikes need a fridge too (if deciding to do temp controlled items which takes up space and remove capacity as well as adding weight overall to the unloaded vehicle.

So whilst extreme something like 20x9 rolls of toilet paper, 20x5l vegetable oil is going to be a non starter so they'll need to use the volumetric weight system to work out which deliveries are possible.

Week before last I bought 6x9 loo rolls plus some smaller stuff and even with a 70L rucksack plus 50L panniers I had to leave a single 9 roll pack behind. The following week I bought 10kg sack of rice, 2x5l vege oil, 3l milk, 4x450g sauces, 3x500g spread, 1kg pork chops, 2 bag of flour plus the all important bags of midget gems, I could have got another 3x5l vege oil in the rucksack on top of the rice but 30kg net load up the 7% slope back home was more than enough.
I hope it takes off but think they need to look at the bikes used for deliveries which are in use elsewhere in the world that can take the bulk and decide if it's just ambient.

Sorry, but I have to ask - why would you want to buy in excess of 5 gallons of vegetable oil in one go????

I have cycled home looking very pregnant having been in a similar situation and shoved the rolls down my Jersey!!!

[Cunobelin]

Part of the issue is the way that the Supermarkets have changed shopping.

As a kid, we never had a massive shop. We would get what we needed when we needed it, and it was always possible to carry it by bike, bus or on foot. It also was from local shops, who knew heir customers. I can remember going into the local butchers and instead of buying what Iwas on the list, being told that a particular item had come in and been put aside, because it was something my parents liked - they were never wrong



Very occasionally one of us kids would be detailed off as a beast of burden if there was something coming up like Christmas, relatives staying or similar

Do we really need these massive bulk shop purchases?

[Bmblbzzz]

There's been a trend away from, or perhaps more accurately a further development of, the bulk weekly or fortnightly shop. The trend now is to as and when purchases of most food items with a bulk shop of non-perishables every month or so. This is both driven by and reflected in the emergence of smaller 'local' supermarkets, and is complementary to the out-of-town mega-hypermarkets.