- Confused delivery drivers add time, cost, and frustration to deliveries.
- A lot of this confusion comes from addresses and entrances not matching up exactly.
There are few greater frustrations than knowing your delivery is, or was, close — and the carrier couldn't find your door.
"A typical driver might spend 10 minutes driving around an unfamiliar apartment complex, trying to find the right building and then the exact unit number, wasting time, fuel, and patience," said Evan Robinson, vice president of engineering or last-mile delivery startup AxleHire in a statement announcing the company's partnership with what3words — one of a handful of tech firms attempting to disrupt the address.
The English tech company throws out traditional addresses and instead divides the world into a grid of 10-foot by 10-foot squares. Each square is identified by a combination of three seemingly random words.
In a delivery scenario, the drive receives the code, which identifies the grid square containing the entrance as opposed to the traditional address. Recipients can also use the tech to identify a precise location for packages to be dropped (within 10 feet) — like the back door instead of the front.
In many cases, recipients enter their street address when they make the initial purchase and then see a question pop up asking them to specify a grid square. Then what3words generates the code for Axelhire to use when it's delivery time.
"This is a new way of thinking about addresses and collecting information," Robinson told Insider.
Axlehire became the first US last-mile delivery company to work with what3words in December, but the company had previously worked with global delivery companies, automakers, and emergency call centers in the UK, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Singapore, Canada, India, and South Africa.
Pooling local knowledge
Beans.ai is another company that's looking to cut down on wasted time and emissions with more precise address data — but this time built with shoe leather. The team has been building a massive database of practical address data for five years by paying gig economy drivers already delivering food, to record the exact steps needed to actually reach not just an address, but a doorstep.
And it's not just finding the door. Beans collects data on other crucial details like doormen's hours and procedures for large packages — sometimes from drivers on the ground, sometimes by contacting builders and property management companies.
Cofounder Nitin Gupta came up with the idea when paramedics took 15 minutes to find his apartment after they'd arrived at the address following an emergency call for his mother, he told Insider last year. His mother survived, but it was close.
In addition to paying gig drivers to record info, Beans.ai collected decades of info that emergency responders still keep in binders full of notes on paper.
The result is an app and data service growing in popularity with delivery businesses of all kinds including Instacart, Uber Eats, and the small businesses that deliver for FedEx Ground. Gupta said the average use saves three-and-a-half minutes per delivery. That may not sound like a lot of value for consumers, but it's essentially $1 of labor per delivery saved for logistics companies, and it could mean a lot to the last few deliveries on a route, which are easily bumped to the next day when time is wasted wandering around vast apartment complexes.
Cofounder Akash Agarwal told Insider it also tends to drive 7-10% higher tips for drivers.
After tackling delivery to multi-tenant residential buildings, the company has moved on to even more confusing properties like hotels, hospitals, universities, and mobile home parks.