Last‑mile needs shared infrastructure

The cheapest way to scale e-commerce is no longer one van, one porch, one stop; it is shared last-mile infrastructure. (mckinsey.de) McKinsey said the last mile accounts for 60% to 70% of parcel delivery costs, and moving from one parcel per stop at a home to five parcels at one locker or pickup point cuts labor and vehicle costs sharply. (mckinsey.de) That cost pressure is rising with volume. Pitney Bowes said U.S. parcel shipments reached 22.37 billion in 2024, up 3.4% from 2023, while total revenue rose 2.7% and revenue per parcel slipped to $9.09 from $9.10. (pitneybowes.com) Shared nodes are the physical version of route consolidation: lockers, store counters, and pickup-and-drop-off shops let carriers deliver many parcels in one place instead of repeating the same street-level trip. Amazon says eligible orders can already be sent to Amazon Locker, Amazon Counter, or UPS Access Point locations at checkout. (amazon.com) The volume behind that shift is still growing. The U.S. Census Bureau said retail e-commerce sales were $316.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 5.3% from a year earlier, and accounted for 16.6% of total retail sales. (census.gov) Carriers are building around that demand with shared networks that sit between warehouses and front doors. UPS says its Access Point locations are local businesses that receive or accept ready-to-ship packages, including returns, instead of relying only on home delivery. (ups.com) The model is already mature in parts of Europe. McKinsey said Poland and the Czech Republic have about 15 out-of-home points per 10,000 residents, Finland has about 16, while Germany has about 8 and France about 9. (mckinsey.de) DHL’s German consumer site now directs customers to Packstations, parcel shops, and post offices as interchangeable pickup and drop-off points, showing how the network is treated as common delivery infrastructure rather than a single-store add-on. (dhl.de) City planners are pushing in the same direction. A 2024 World Economic Forum and Accenture paper said rising delivery volumes are increasing congestion, emissions, and safety risks in cities, and called for investment in shared urban logistics infrastructure. (weforum.org) For retailers, the appeal is operational as much as environmental. If inbound freight is already volatile and carrier pricing is tightening, a denser network of lockers, counters, and real-time tracking offers one way to add delivery capacity without multiplying the most expensive leg of every order. (pitneybowes.com)