FEATURE : CLIMATE IMPACT
WHEN WE FIRST STARTED PACKFLEET , WE WANTED TO BE KNOWN AS A TECH COMPANY FIRST , AND AN ALL-ELECTRIC COURIER SECOND .
Whenever we make a decision , we consider two things : how does this help us offer sustainable deliveries and does it compromise our customer experience ? These are the two most important things to Packfleet , and building our tech stack from the ground up means we ’ ve been able to drive towards a more efficient and sustainable delivery alternative .
We wanted to use technology to provide a solution to polluting deliveries that arrive late , or at times not at all . We had to innovate and got to work building our inhouse routing platform that powers all of our deliveries , known today as Pathfinder .
Cracking the routing conundrum
Routing has long been a formidable challenge . Often couriers opt to provide their drivers with a list of addresses for them to figure out the route themselves . While some drivers may have incredible local knowledge ( akin to a London black cabbie ), it can be difficult to consider outside factors like roadworks or busy traffic , and makes it difficult for customers to change the delivery address or time .
It ’ s understandable why some couriers do it this way – routing is infinitely complex . If two vans make deliveries to 20 stops , the number of potential routes is 2.5 quintillion – a number so big it has 17 zeros in it ! However , technology can empower couriers to navigate all of these possibilities in mere seconds , and put drivers on the route that ’ s the most efficient and sustainable , updating in real-time if , for example , a customer changes their delivery address .
We built Pathfinder with these applications in mind , and the platform is based on the latest research on vehicle routing , mapping and AI . AI is built into our software and is used to forecast the number of deliveries for our small and medium merchants . We ’ re also able to review historical data and consider seasonality and estimates to accurately predict the number of parcels due to be delivered well in advance .
Incremental gains
Putting technology first also comes with a lot of long-term benefits . Over the past three years , we ’ ve gathered a large bank of data on specific locations across London .
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