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The looming end of independent logistics partners

Corona has made the public aware of the economy’s dependence on uninterrupted supply chains. In the current state of globalization, deliverables are coming from where they are cheapest. Manufacturing and distribution require complex supply routes – for raw materials, components, end products, and even services. As with all networks, the „last mile“ is the hardest part, often outsourced to external logistics partners, such as DHL, Hermes, UPS, DPD, GLS, FedEx/TNT, and, if necessary, small biz. B2C, in particular, depends on the delivery networks, literally every household.

In 2020, each home in Germany received an average of 63 shipments. It means more than one delivery per week. Every shipment must be taken manually by a logistics partner on the „last meters“ and carried more or less far. The delivery companies work with their hubs from where they drive with their vehicles within the day to the addressees. Increasingly, drivers are skipping time-consuming stations. Can it go on like this?

  • Too many
    The distribution of shipments among several logistics partners is inconvenient for the shippers and the recipients. Each company has its approach to steer drivers, vehicles, procedures, and delivery points in the best possible way. As a result, many vehicles deliver to one customer per day. Each driver has its way of leaving packages and documenting acceptance – drivers are not afraid to sign on behalf of the customer or fill their systems with false status messages. Digitization indeed creates timely transparency. Still, misuse by drivers destroys this advantage (example message: Unfortunately, acceptance of your parcel has been refused. Therefore, your package will be returned to the sender.).
  • Automated non-contact
    The quickest way to resolve a problem is for the addressees to contact the deliverer quickly. The assumption that recipients could contact the deliverer with just one click is one of the urban legends of the Internet age. Although providers offer online forms and a well-hidden telephone number to enable contact. All the customer gets is a well-worded standard message sent immediately to confirm receipt. However, it is automated feedback without any human participation. The spam folder in which the requests disappear cannot be traced. A phone call does not help either. Modern telephone systems provide lengthy verbal menus that need to be answered, only to end up waiting on hold until an employee picks and immediately hangs up. The whole thing now starts all over again. Remarkable is in this context DPD, who announces the upcoming waiting times every few minutes – 5 minutes in the beginning, then 14 minutes, then 1 minute, then 11 minutes, and so on. The end of the story is that the installed touchpoints are no longer contact points, but walls keep the customer away.
  • Inappropriate infrastructure
    Undoubtedly, it is an advantage for the consumer society that people can order goods conveniently, from their sofa, and receive them in principle at the front door. ONE logistics partner would be much more sustainable – fewer appointments, less congestion, fewer differences, and more reliable delivery. As long as the recipients live in the countryside and have sufficient parking spaces in front of the house, stopping should not be critical – as long as it is delivered at all to the last, uneconomic corner. The risks and walking distances increase dramatically in inner cities since drivers are now consistently penalized for stopping in bike lanes or second row parking. It is even worse in traffic-congested centers. Since drivers have to distribute a lot of parcels in a very short time to get to their hourly wage, it can quickly happen that drivers simply do not deliver to complicated addresses because their standard run is jeopardized. Drivers‘ inhibitions are already so low that in complex cases, they decide not to deliver – „I don’t have time to deliver there.“
  • Precarious employment
    Delivery companies have few alternatives to spare money – first with salaries and then with vehicles. Permanent employees with a reasonable minimum wage are the most expensive way to provide a delivery network. Salaries range from up to 22% more than average, to even 10% less than the average (which explains why some parcels do not arrive reliably). The most favorable alternative for the parcel, express, and courier services is self-employed small biz owners. Here, the delivery companies benefit from the self-exploitation of the individual entrepreneurs. As a result, the black sheep drivers destroy the reputation of the delivery company at the touchpoint to the customer. With the current remuneration, it is understandable that the drivers take advantage of existing gaps. The dispatched companies support these relationships by placing orders with the cheapest suppliers.

Bottom line: The brave new world of online commerce thrives on the glamour of websites. Easy navigation and ALWAYS the best prices encourage customers to buy. However, the backbone of it all is not the online presentation but the reliable supply chain. With multiple disparate service providers, sealing-off through automated touchpoints, difficult delivery infrastructure, and precarious workforce, this biz model is at risk. The pendulum of online commerce eventually reaches its maximum amplitude. When the pendulum swings back, the local shops will win back customers for lucrative goods. In the meantime, the big companies will follow Amazon’s lead and establish their internal delivery management, making drivers a committed part of the biz. Companies like DPD will disappear in the medium term. The black sheep make the most significant contribution to the impending end of independent logistics partners of drivers who optimize themselves and do not act in the interests of their company.

(Un)truth with and without

In the beginning, was the difference! To before – whatever that was. Since then, becoming been happening. At every moment, reality gets further fractalized. There is no end in sight. We are observers looking out of our box, absorbing the world’s stimuli, and processing them in our minds. We associate the symbol o with a tetragon or a rectangle, or a square. For some, it is simply an incomprehensible something. Some people recognize this symbol © as an automotive brand. Interested people wonder. The disinterested ignore. The only real thing is the sign © at this point. What someone explains becomes the meaning – until somebody else provides another explanation. Who’s right? Both! The meaning is always in the eye of the beholder.

Since our knowledge is constantly evolving, every realization already contains its replacement by a new (un)truth, which is also more or less quickly superseded. We climb the mountain of knowledge with the assumption that we are heading for a peak. Along the way, (un)truths are found in various states: Fact, opinion, faith, fallacy, or conspiracy.

  • The (un)truth as a fact
    The expected normal state of an occurring circumstance is a provable or generally accepted fact. Gottlob Frege distinguished facts of the real world and thoughts. „Reality“ can be grasped most precisely with the available measuring tools. Thoughts are accessible only indirectly through inquiry and filtered expression
    At the end of the 16th-century, scientists explained electrical attraction as a consequence of the fluidum surrounding a body as a cloud of vapor attracting other substances. Today we see the reason in positive and negative charges of the elementary particles. Until science provides an accepted explanation, the fact lacks the blessing. An example of a rejection of the science community is the morphic field of the biologist Rupert Sheldrake – although no other proofs are given. Accordingly, an article on morphic fields in the German Wikipedia has not yet made it into the English one. Mental issues become plausible only by their coherence. Varying explanations turn them into opinions. Except: We follow Kellyanne Conway and consider the notion of alternative facts.
    Science and measuring tools are the basis for contemporary truths, which abruptly become falsehoods through new measurements. The realm beyond measurability is called metaphysics.
  • The (Un)Truth as Opinion
    The opinion is a personal believing in a case that can be inferred by explanation, even if there is no tangible evidence. A hypothesis remains an opinion until it is „proven“. The morphic fields above are a good example. Another one is the Higgs boson that was formulated in 1964 and not proven until 2012 in the LHC.
    In contrast to the fact, whose existence is based on quantitative and numerical evaluations, opinions are expressed, explained, and eventually substantiated. Wittgenstein had already focused attention on the interplay (TLP 1.1 „The world is the totality of facts, not of things.„). However, it is left to the audience to adopt an opinion that arises – i.e., to think it is correct and to believe it (not in the religious sense – see the next point).
    Opinions are more contagious and easier to repeat, pass on, and apply in different contexts and have longevity. Opinions make the same powerful impact on the opinioning ones as facts. However, it is more difficult to get rid of deep convictions.
  • The (Un)Truth as Faith
    Religion strongly overlaps with opinion, as both manifest as doctrine in the minds of „fans“. This overlapping explains why opinions are readily defamed as esotericism. The present description makes a distinction between an opinion and a religious belief – as secular and spiritual.
    The awe of an order that cannot be explained or proven, but is built on traditional dogma, creates in believers a truth that is incomprehensible to „non-believers“. According to Gallup, in the U.S. in 2019, 40% of the population, the so-called creationists, believed that God created man in his present form. 33% that man evolved with God’s guidance (i.e., Intelligent Design). Only 22% believed in evolution, i.e., that God had no part in the development.
    Article four of the German constitution states, „(1) The freedom of faith, conscience and the freedom of religious and ideological confession are inviolable. (2) The undisturbed practice of religion is guaranteed.“ This makes faith a personal attitude that is not debatable. (Un)truths arise as a consequence for each person.
  • The (un)truth as a fallacy
    As soon as a fact or an opinion turns out to be false, we speak of a fallacy. Whether an opinion or a religious belief is a deception must be made by each person for oneself.
    Karl Popper formed the concept of falsifiability. He showed that no theory could be verified one hundred percent. The only certainty we get is finding proof of a fact’s wrongness (to falsify). The appearance of ONE black swan disproves the statement that all swans are white and the original „truth“ is false. Let us think of the statement The earth is a disk. Even the Greeks recognized the spherical shape. By the 19th century, the fallacy had spread that medieval society considered the earth being flat, which never happened. At the latest with the Apollo missions, the last ones should be convinced of the „sphere“, except a few conspiracy theorists.
    Especially realists and materialists are challenged by fallacies as soon as different disciplines and contradictory study results question their worldview. This uncertainty becomes visible in the compulsive urge to defend one’s findings and defame new approaches even without a better explanation. Although we know, according to Popper, that the fallacy is the more factual counterpart of the fact.
  • The (un)truth as a conspiracy theory
    A particular genre is fake news or conspiracy theories, which are deliberately put into the world to manipulate people by pretending facts. Fatally, these terms have become a rhetorical killer phrase. If someone doesn’t like a statement or point of view, it is maligned as fake news and conspiracy theory.
    The previous president of the United States showed how this is done, and politicians around the world have adopted this approach. At the same time, fake news is penetratingly hammered into the heads of inattentive listeners until they can only conclude that these facts must be true. However, in the beginning, it is mainly deliberate lying, which might become a conspiracy over time. A conspiracy needs conspirators who secretly join forces to bring about conditions they desire by putting corresponding theories into the world. For this purpose, the agitators turn the tables and accuse the opponent of wanting to seduce the population with magic and incitement. They develop untruths and cement them through so-called evidence and other dubious claims into the mind of the victims. Thereby a thought model difficult to grasp is created, characterized by fatal stability, and that can only be refuted with effort.
    The manipulators tend to strike back prophylactically by denigrating the opposing parties‘ facts, opinions, and beliefs as conspiracy theories. This creates fear of contact and makes discourse impossible. For this reason, it is crucial to make these untruths visible at an early stage and to set up effective countermeasures – taking the concerns of the target groups seriously; answering easy-to-understand arguments with simple counterarguments; provide more appealing platforms than the agitators.

Bottom line: Today’s (un)truths spread rapidly with one click of a mouse throughout the world. As long as we do not learn to deal with them, the propagandists will receive a large influx. It is vital to be aware of a fact’s temporary validity and be open to new things. Opinions are the precursor to facts because they build a thought model that only needs to be proven. If it is a religious belief, then we must tolerate it because everyone has a right of their faith – which should a priori rule out religious wars. As soon as we falsify a fact, a hundred percent truth emerges – that it is simply not as conceived. The organized seduction of the public is linked to a purpose – maintaining or acquiring power. Conspiracies are hard to unravel because their adherents develop a quasi-religious conviction. In the end, the world is constantly changing and creating (un)truths with and without intent.