People’s Parcel Delivery

Disclaimer

This essay does not describe an existing computer program, just one that should exist. This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project. Everything I have prepared to help you is right here.

This project outline is not like the artificial, tidy little problems you are spoon-fed in school, when all the facts you need are included, nothing extraneous is mentioned, the answer is fully specified, along with hints to nudge you toward a single expected canonical solution. This project is much more like the real world of messy problems where it is up to you to fully the define the end point, or a series of ever more difficult versions of this project and research the information yourself to solve them.

Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; or give you any additional materials. I have too many other projects of my own.

Though I am a programmer by profession, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project in any way you please and to keep all the profits from your endeavour.

Please do not email me about this project without reading the disclaimer above.

I think it costs far too much to deliver a package by mail, UPS (United Parcel Service of America), Fedex etc. Here are some ideas to get the cost way down. Let us start with an example. You are Post Cereals and you have a free tee shirt promo. You now have thousands of tee shirts to deliver. They come in three sizes. Rapid delivery is not necessary. What if there were a service like this:

Post drops off its packages, not addressed, just coded with the contents.

Sufficient boxes are bulk shipped to an agent in victoria.

The agent uses his computer to print mail labels. They specify which type of box to affix them to.

The computer prints out a list of the days’s deliveries, (1/30 of the whole order), all in the same vicinity, sorted like a postman’s walk.

The agent then loads the day’s boxes up into a cart, attaches it behind a bicycle and delivers them. If they can’t be delivered, he leaves a card telling a time and place for pickup. The agent may be running this out of his basement.

If there is no agent yet for some region, the business is refused. Customers can use a computer program to provide a list of which addresses can be delivered and which cannot.

Of course, you combine cartfulls of packages from various senders.

Advantages

Low greenhouse footprint. By collecting up deliveries for a concentrated region, you do not need a truck.

Labour costs can be low. People can become agents with very little investment. They don’t need to devote full time.

The size of the territory can be adjusted to allow for the amount of time the agent wants to invest.

Disadvantages

No express delivery.

You still have the cost of the bulk deliveries. Unless bulk shipping is drastically cheaper than invididual shipping, this plan will not fly. You might still do in-town delivery, though people then would be less likely to tolerate the delay. It might even be used for political flyers or targeted advertising.

If the agent is a single person, he can’t handle pickups while he is out delivering.

A postman has a key to every building. Your agents would not. They can’t even leave a message in the postbox.

Postpones labeling where most of the packages contain the same thing. This means less tracking and sorting overhead.

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This page is posted
on the web at:

http://mindprod.com/project/peoplesparceldelivery.html

Optional Replicator mirror
of mindprod.com
on local hard disk J:

J:\mindprod\project\peoplesparceldelivery.html

Please read the feedback from other visitors, or send your own feedback about the site.
Contact Roedy. Please feel free to link to this page without explicit permission.

Canadian Mind Products
IP:[65.110.21.43]
Your face IP:[3.141.29.90]

Feedback

You are visitor number