As any loading bay operator should know, e-commerce is changing the face of their operations. Online UK sales are expected to hit £100 billion this year, promising a rosy future for parcel delivery companies. Whether deliveries are direct to buyers’ homes or at click-and-collect drop off points one thing is clear. Loading bays will have to adjust to an ever-wider range of vehicles. For quite some years double-deck trailers have impacted handling bay operations by forcing new interface solutions that conventional dock levellers cannot handle. Now, there is a downsizing trend in the sense that smaller vans will become the essential requirement to cope with soaring parcel deliveries directly to people’s homes. This is borne out by figures for new van registrations, which rose 45% between 2009 and 2013.
For many loading bay operators, therefore, the need will be to handle a greater variety of vehicles. To meet this need, loading bay specialist, Hormann, recently launched its Parcel Walk door, shown at this year’s Cemat in Hannover. It is designed to accommodate loading and unloading of both vans and trucks from the same level access bay. It is well suited for work with conveyor systems, often used in parcel handling work. Longer dock levellers have been in use for some time to cope with a wider range of vehicle bed heights but with vans, in particular, width can be an issue. Hormann’s solution to this is its HTLV3 dock leveller with three-part telescopic lip. A switch on the control panel allows only the centre section of the lip to extend, making it suitable for smaller vehicles.
Retailing, which accounts for so much of distribution via conventionally-equipped warehouse, is going through a revolution owing to online shopping but is another revolution about to dawn, which will not only shake up the existing online players but also seriously threaten many retailers through disintermediation? It is a scenario which, if realized, could see many distribution centres disappear, along with diminution of online shopping players like Amazon and Ebay. The threat will come from a late arrival to online shopping looking to raise $20 billion on the New York Stock Exchange – Alibaba.
The value of goods sold through its various portals in 2013 hit $248 billion, twice what Amazon achieved and three times as much as Ebay, but unlike them it offers a truly global online marketplace to enable border-hopping commerce that bypasses middlemen and erodes governments’ ability to regulate trade. Shoppers will be able to compare prices of the same product in different countries as well as source generic products at the cheapest price. Manufacturers will not have to set up physical sales outlets in countries to which they want to export because they can use Tmall, a virtual shopping centre. Already, it gives thousands of companies, including leading brands, easy access to China. Buyers will have a world of sellers from which to buy anything under the sun and the increased competition is likely to standardise and depress prices globally. It should also be a boon the SMEs wishing to supply export markets directly to the consumers’ home, cutting out bricks and mortar retailers and wholesaler middlemen.
Such developments should deliver a tremendous boost to van sales and the equipment to load them and the future for parcel delivery companies will look rosier.
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