by Walther Ploos van Amstel
The Dutch postal market is at an impasse. PostNL holds a monopoly on letter mail delivery; service quality is deteriorating rapidly, and prices are rising sharply (in some cases by 150 to 300 percent). At the same time, the company claims that its letter mail service is loss-making and is demanding subsidies or seeking to …
A new study compares how five global cities handle e-commerce deliveries — and finds that context is everything. City logistics keeps growing, and with it, the pressure on urban streets. More parcels, more vans, more congestion, and more urgency for cities to find smarter solutions. But which solutions actually work? A new study published in …
Many cities aim to be fully circular by 2050. That sounds like a promise. But anyone who looks honestly at what is actually happening sees mostly well-intentioned projects that deliver little in practice. Worm hotels in neighborhood gardens. A timber auction of felled city trees. Discounts on shoe repairs via local city passes. Inspiring, yes, …
Cities are under pressure to clean up their freight emissions. Goods vehicles make up only 10% of urban traffic but account for a quarter of city CO₂ emissions. This is a disproportionate impact that policymakers can no longer ignore. One popular answer is the urban logistics facility: a hub positioned within the city that consolidates …
Imagine two taxi drivers working at the same time, in the same city, for the same platform. One earns €18 an hour, the other €12. Nobody knows exactly why. This is the world of dynamic pricing — a controversial innovation in the gig economy. As consumers, we have already grown accustomed to it when booking …
Every day, hundreds of sofas, armchairs, and chairs are left out on the streets of Dutch cities. Sometimes properly reported to the municipality, often just abandoned on the pavement. The end of a product that has served its purpose for an average of seven to seventeen years, and that, in most cases, goes straight to …
For a company that operates more than 9,800 stores across two continents, Ahold Delhaize has quietly become one of the most formidable e-commerce players in the food retail industry. Its Q1 2026 results make that case compellingly. Group online sales reached €2.6 billion in the first quarter, up 8.3% at constant exchange rates. Net consumer …
New York City is in the thick of a landmark policy battle over last-mile delivery regulation. The city administration has officially endorsed a City Council bill that would require e-commerce companies to directly hire and pay delivery workers, drawing fierce opposition from an Amazon-backed coalition. The bill would force companies to directly employ delivery workers, …
A major peer-reviewed study published this week in Nature Cities maps last-mile delivery emissions across 365 Chinese cities using data from 14 billion orders and 1.9 million couriers. The research finds that order growth does not translate proportionally into emissions: an 83.5% increase in orders from 2023 to 2024 resulted in only a 31.3% rise …
Amazon Supply Chain Services Opens Its Logistics Network to Third Parties. Are the concerns of UPS, FedEx, and DHL shareholders justified? Amazon has announced Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS): a full opening of its logistics network to any business, not just its own marketplace sellers. UPS lost more than 10% in a single day. FedEx …