Last Mile Delivery

U.S. consumers have become accustomed to fast, inexpensive delivery directly to their doorstep. Yet few consider the work or the workers who are doing the deliveries. Parcel delivery is one of the fastest growing occupations open to people with only a high school education.

It is also a physically demanding job with high injury rates. Delivery work relies on public roads and delivery workers are in direct contact with customers in their homes and businesses. As the so-called “last mile” delivery industry grows, there are concerns about the traffic accidents, congestion, and pollution that impact all citizens, in addition to worries about wages, job quality, and working conditions for workers.

This study of last mile delivery drivers seeks to accurately describe the nature of the parcel delivery work, to assess the differences across organizations that employ or engage delivery workers, and to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of new technologies such as electric vehicles, dashboard cameras, vehicle sensors and digital parcel tracking, and to evaluate the role of unionization. This research will examine differences among parcel delivery vendors and management systems to inform managers, customers, present and prospective delivery workers and regulators and assist in making better choices.

The last-mile delivery industry offers a unique opportunity to compare different systems for organizing the same work and to consider how weather conditions impact working experiences. The project team is surveying a representative sample of last-mile delivery drivers in two regions in the U.S. that are comparable in geographic and labor market size and scale, encompass the full range of urban, suburban, and rural delivery routes, and offer similar non-delivery job opportunities, but differ in an important occupational hazard facing delivery workers – weather.

The survey questions focus on working conditions, management practices, and worker attitudes and behaviors.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.