The Last Mile in 2035: What Will Really Change, and What Will Stay the Same

In this episode of Rozmowy Logistyków, Piotr Skobało and Adam Sobolewski let their imagination run and discuss what last-mile delivery might look like a decade from now. They think through which direction delivery formats and customer expectations are likely to evolve.

FOUR GENERATIONS OF COMMERCE, BUT TIME DOESN'T MOVE AT THE SAME PACE EVERYWHERE

The first generation is self-service in big-box stores, the second is 2-3 day delivery (van, truck), the third is under-an-hour express delivery for a narrow group of products (quick commerce), and the fourth — still taking shape — is delivery driven not just by speed but by environmental and social responsibility. A key geographic caveat: these generations don't happen simultaneously everywhere — what Poland considers history today is still current reality in Hungary or Romania, and the further east you go, the further back in time you go, until in Asia the clock suddenly jumps forward.

DELIVERY SPEED IS A FUNCTION OF INVENTORY PLACEMENT, NOT TRANSPORT

A key, often underappreciated fact: the technology of physically getting a parcel to the customer has changed little (vans, delivery bikes) — what actually enables one-hour delivery (quick commerce) is "inventory placement": spreading stock close to the customer across a dense network of small hubs and stores, not improving transport itself. The "from store shelf to home" delivery model (like the one built by Biedronka with Glovo) solves the proximity-of-stock problem, but complicates retail sales planning — because the same goods are now consumed through two different channels at once.

DRONES: TECHNOLOGY IS AHEAD OF THE LAW

Drone delivery has been developing technologically for a decade, but in Europe it's held back by legislation — in the United States, commercial drone traffic is already permitted (Amazon tested it in the UK before Brexit), in the European Union it still isn't. Polish tests have already happened: Decathlon tested inter-store drone transfers in Lublin in 2021-2022 (not deliveries to individual customers), and pharmaceutical companies are testing deliveries to pharmacies — because small, high-value shipments are the natural first use case.

SOCIAL TRUST AS THE LIMITING FACTOR, NOT TECHNOLOGY

Amazon Key, in some US regions, lets a courier unlock a smart lock configured through an app, enter, leave the parcel, and lock the door behind them — a level of trust that still feels distant in Polish consumer culture, even though leaving parcels unattended at the door (without that "entering the home" step) is already widely accepted. Parcel lockers gained huge popularity in Poland precisely as a compromise: you don't have to meet the courier, but you also don't have to trust them quite that much.

DUPLICATED INFRASTRUCTURE: IS THE FUTURE SHARED LOCKERS?

The density of different operators' parcel lockers sitting side by side in the same location raises the question of whether duplicating infrastructure even makes economic sense. Hong Kong has already introduced legislation forcing an open parcel-locker network — several operators have to share the same infrastructure instead of building parallel networks. Similar pressure could reach the European Union in the future, leading to a situation where InPost delivers to a DPD locker and DPD delivers to an InPost locker, wherever the other network doesn't have its own point.

SHORT-, MEDIUM-, AND LONG-TERM TRANSPORT TRENDS

Short-term: electric vehicles and delivery bikes (effective mainly in dense urban areas) — though it's not certain whether electric will win out over hydrogen in the longer run. Medium-term: semi-autonomous vehicles, especially in full-truckload transport over long distances (Australia, the US), where a driver "plugs in" to take over maneuvering only on approach to the destination, similar to a pilot taking control from autopilot. Long-term: fully autonomous delivery, where the human role in the process could shrink to nearly zero on both sides of the transaction.