TNT Foot Delivery Trials in Liverpool

norbert · Post by **norbert** » 30 Aug 2008, 09:51

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ ... nto_growth

NWpostie · Post by **NWpostie** » 01 Sep 2008, 00:04

Only Royal Mail delivers to every address, if these private companies disrupts that and causes RM to go out of business, there will be no body to hand DSAs to, Postal Liberalisation is one big cock up

BELIAL · Post by **BELIAL** » 01 Sep 2008, 00:11

TnT invests £1 million to cover Yorkshire, the NE and the NW? Thats positive thinking for you,f'ing magic good luck to them

andy2007 · Post by **andy2007** » 01 Sep 2008, 09:25

If the trial is successful. They should be Legally obliged to introduce it, across the whole of the UK, and comply with the USO. If not. They should be prevented from delivering the "final mile" ANYWHERE! Otherwise, the USO would quickly become unsustainable, in it's present form.

F0zziebear · Post by **F0zziebear** » 01 Sep 2008, 11:41

Nice to see the site is back up.

As I've stated before no rival postal company is ever going to be able to cover the whole country. At best a company could seek to cover about 60% of all household addresses and 10% geographical coverage. This means that 40% of households will probably be solely delivered to by Royal Mail. This means that Royal Mail will always survive in some form. What this form is, is the question.

1. Stop any liberalisation and keep RM as a public service foremost
2. Partial privatisation (e.g. zonal pricing to prevent private companies cremaing profits)
3. full privatisation and let the market determine the price of mail (e.g. cheaper within urban areas, more expensive in rural etc...)

I have played around with all of these models and suspect that bulk collection and sorting should sit within the private sector, and deliveries esp. rural deliveries should remain in public hands. I say this because most mail is now commercial mail underpinned by the big bannks, utilities and supermarkets. Mail is no longer primarily a social service. It is more complicated that a single paragraph so cannot give a full explanation of my logic here.

DGP1 · Post by **DGP1** » 01 Sep 2008, 11:59

Lets look at the facts here - TNT are to invest £1million in the NE & NW area

that money is nothing, just to deliver to a large city like Liverpool they would need to invest many times that.

F0zziebear · Post by **F0zziebear** » 01 Sep 2008, 12:56

Money can't buy you quality. From ym own experience none of the major businesses are prepared to go with competitors unless they can provide similar quality of service to RM. The only reason why they have gone with competitors is because they use downstream access. As long as they get 99% of their mail into RM inward sort mailcentres then they can achieve comparable QofS.

If they are delivering individual items via this IT service then maybe they can afford lower quality of service, but this is small volume and as you rightly said £1 million investment is peanuts.

Night Tonic · Post by **Night Tonic** » 01 Sep 2008, 12:58

So we can ignore it then? I'll try to forget they will double turnover this year. Any increase in competition puts more of a squeeze on as as far as I'm concerned.

F0zziebear · Post by **F0zziebear** » 01 Sep 2008, 13:35

Night Tonic, you are right at any item of mail delivered someone else at a minimum is taking some revenue away from RM, and if its E2E then it's the full vlaue of that item. however, remember that if 99% of mail is still delivered by RM then the majority of the revenue from that item still goes to RM. This is some comfort to deliverers, but scant comfort to those who collect, sort and distribute bulk volume. This is why you are seeing major rationalisation of mail centres and RDC's. And why you are not seeing major cuts in deliveries (relatively speaking).

Automation and continued quality of service (maybe moving goalposts) will help fend off major E2E competition. TNT post in Manchester is fiddling around the edges. Let them try and offer a quality of service comparable to RM without making huge losses

mailman71 · Post by **mailman71** » 01 Sep 2008, 15:58

if has been said that t.n.t. are serious about starting to do deliveries then royal mail had better rethink their ideas,people want their mail early in the day not 3or4 in the afternoon as royal mail want.
the public are well peed of with the way royal mail have moved the deliveries later in the day so if anybody comes in and delivers earlier in the day then the s-it will hit the fan.

Post by **TrueBlueTerrier** » 01 Sep 2008, 15:59

BELIAL wrote:TnT invests £1 million to cover Yorkshire, the NE and the NW? Thats positive thinking for you,f'ing magic good luck to them

£1,000,000 that's probably the budget on 1 Postcode area in my Do and we have 9 areas. As Night Tonic says it can't be ignored because it will have some impact on us but based on budgets they will have to be supremely efficient and offer very low wages to make any real impact in the short term. Long Term its very worrying imho.

In fact I don't think anyone transported from 2008 to 2018 would recognise the delivery process apart from the very last stage of it of course.

F0zziebear · Post by **F0zziebear** » 01 Sep 2008, 16:42

TBT you most probably right, but then the postal system has changed over time (no more horsedrawn carriages etc.) Trains, planes and automobiles these days (great film!)
One thing that cannot be replaced easily is how you get the stuff from a depot (wherever it maybe) to the door. Unless robots are created a workforce of people who know the streets will be required to deliver the mail.

One undermining factor could be the demise of physical mail, which could spell the end of the postman and replaced with the courier?

For the next five years I suspect the main changes will be a 1/3 reduction in mail centres, closures of RDC's, implementation of walk sequence sorting in delivery offices. Will Royal Mail be broken up and privatised in five years, I suspect not, but preparation to do so will continue.

andy2007 · Post by **andy2007** » 02 Sep 2008, 07:47

F0zziebear wrote:Nice to see the site is back up.

As I've stated before no rival postal company is ever going to be able to cover the whole country. At best a company could seek to cover about 60% of all household addresses and 10% geographical coverage. This means that 40% of households will probably be solely delivered to by Royal Mail. This means that Royal Mail will always survive in some form. What this form is, is the question.

1. Stop any liberalisation and keep RM as a public service foremost
2. Partial privatisation (e.g. zonal pricing to prevent private companies cremaing profits)
3. full privatisation and let the market determine the price of mail (e.g. cheaper within urban areas, more expensive in rural etc...)

I have played around with all of these models and suspect that bulk collection and sorting should sit within the private sector, and deliveries esp. rural deliveries should remain in public hands. I say this because most mail is now commercial mail underpinned by the big bannks, utilities and supermarkets. Mail is no longer primarily a social service. It is more complicated that a single paragraph so cannot give a full explanation of my logic here.

First of all, I'd like to say: Welcome back Fozziebear!

From the point of view of the Public, I don't think that either of the last 2 would be good. Although, I suspect that option 3 will be our Fate.

There's no chance (in my opinion) of us ever returning to being a State Owned Public Service. Things have already gone too far, for it to be practical to undo the damage. What's the answer?
I wish I knew!

Personally, i still believe that it is possible for us to continue to provide the USO in it's present form. However, if the Competition is allowed to provide an E2E Service. But only to the profitable areas. It would mean that the cost of providing deliveries to Rural areas, would be increased. Which would force the use of Zonal Pricing.

The fact is, that the USO has always been subsidised by the profitable areas. Now that we are loosing so much of the profitable work to the Competition, we're starting to loose money on the USO. But what we do need to do, is find a way to continue providing the USO, without compromising on the quality. I just don't know how it can be achieved.

F0zziebear · Post by **F0zziebear** » 02 Sep 2008, 09:11

I would argue that the good news is this:

Liberalisation across Europe has slowed down and will slow further as the European recession sweeps in. The appetite to privatise across Europe has stalled as countries have realised it's not quite that simple bring in competition.
I expect post to rural areas will increase in cost unless a clear government policy says that it's a human right to have access to mail at a reasonable price. Subsidies exist be it money for Scotland, the Post Office from Government etc.... So there's no reason for the foreseeable future why this will not be the case. however, the service that will provided under this remit will continue to erode as did rural bus services. There are plenty of previous examples if you look closely enough to suggest where things are heading.

Enough from me for now.....

andy2007 · Post by **andy2007** » 02 Sep 2008, 09:50

As you've probably guessed from my earlier Posts. I firmly believe that access to Postal Services at a uniform price IS, a Human Right. Or at least it should be.

You're definitely right about the reduction in the use of Letters. I've made similar comments myself. However, being able to send Cards, Parcels, etc., is still an important part of our Society, and Economy. Why should someone be at a financial disadvantage, because of where they live?
Personally, I feel it would amount to discrimination against Rural Communities.

I realise that due to the changes already in place, it is difficult to fund the USO. But there are other ways to raise money than selling parts of the Business (I still cringe when I have to refer to it as such!

), or subsidies. For example: We have a huge fleet of Lorries, and plenty of Buildings. What's stopping us branching out into general haulage?

That's why I am so adamant that anyone providing any form of E2E Postal Service, must be forced to comply fully with the USO! Otherwise, we will need less Posties to cover the same area (due to it being shared out). People will get used to the reduced quality of Service, provided by the Competition. Which would make it easier to further erode the USO.

I know that I'm starting to sound like a broken Record. But I passionately believe that The USO MUST be protected at all costs!

Obviously, there will be those who disagree with me. But it's what I believe is right, and I will keep doing what little I can, to promote the protection of the USO.

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