> You (and everyone else in the street), will get a notification that its outside for the next 30 minutes - miss it, and it'll go get delivered to a nearby pickup site.
That sounds terrible from just about every perspective. What about people who work during that 30 minutes? Or who have mobility concerns? What about a parent who's young child just fell asleep? Should they all have to go to the pickup site? And let's not kid ourselves, it's not going to be nearby. Especially if you live in a rural area. And how do you open the locker when you get there? Do you need another app that tracks your every movement? No thank you, please just leave the package at my door.
I am not sure about your particular area, but all those concerns have been solved for me. If I get package in my local mailbox (which is always nearby), I get a key to the delivery box dropped into my mail box. If the package doesnt fit there, I get message like "box 5 code 123456" if it is at self pickup site, or I go to the post office - which are both 5 minutes drive, but for box of such size I would need to drive even to my local mailbox.
I will prefer any of those options over my package having to sit in the rain or on the snow.
I'm familiar with apartments and trailer parks, and from experience I can tell you it's a worse system than just delivering door to door.
I tend to agree. As I understand it it's the final mile that balloons the cost and in my view a neighborhood collections box is just a micro-optimization. Same with mass dropoff box truck. You're already driving a vehicle with my package nearby just deliver it at that point.
What I want is cheaper shipping if they drop it off at a post office or something. For example on Amazon I see it as an option but only ever as a "carbon-reduction" vs just delivering to my front door. I know it's cheaper - pass on those savings to me.
The irony is that in many cases, it'd take less carbon for them to deliver to your front door than it would for you to get to the post office -- if they're already delivering to someone else near you, their extra distance traveled might be a block or so (or 0 if they were going to drive past your house anyway).
For delivery-to-post-office to be more carbon-efficient than them delivering to your house, the inequality (additional distance you need to travel to get to post office / your mpg) < (additional distance they need to travel to get to your house / their mpg) must be true. If you were gonna drive past the post office anyway, or your vehicle is significantly more efficient than their delivery van, then it might pencil out. If you're making an extra trip, it probably doesn't make sense.
> No thank you, please just leave the package at my door.
With where I live now, yes. I've had a previous address with about a 15% package-theft rate within the first 2 hours of package delivery. In this situation I started to use lockers instead of straight to home.
I think this type of delivery system (mobile lockers to stationary lockers) would be a hit in areas with high levels of package theft.
Or the police could deal with package theft.
>And how do you open the locker when you get there? Do you need another app that tracks your every movement?
You enter the code from sms, that's it.