Does a Mobile Depot Make Urban Deliveries Faster, More Sustainable and More Economically Viable: Results of a Pilot Test in Brussels

A Mobile Depot (MD) is a trailer fitted with a loading dock, warehousing facilities and an office. The trailer is used as a mobile inner city base from where last-mile deliveries and first-mile pick-ups are done with electrically supported cyclocargos. In the morning and evening it is used to transport shipments from and to a peripheral depot. The MD was developed by TNT Express as a response to the challenging urban working conditions: narrow streets, mixed traffic, traffic congestion, congestion charging, environmental zones, etc. TNT Express tested this innovative concept in Brussels for a period of three months in 2013 as part of the European FP7 project STRAIGHTSOL. Regular TNT Express deliveries and pick-ups in Brussels are carried out from the TNT depot at the Brussels freight airport using diesel trucks for pallets and using diesel vans for parcels and documents. During the trial period, the parcels and documents destined for a part of the inner city were delivered and picked up through the MD. This new way of working resulted in a decrease of the number of diesel kilometres from 1.34 km per stop in the Business-As-Usual scenario to 0.52 km per stop in the Mobile-Depot scenario. This decrease can be linked to a positive environmental impact with, for example, 24% less emission of CO2 and up to 59% less emission of PM2.5. TNT Express was able to successfully integrate the MD in their operations. Service levels dropped slightly mainly due to the additional time needed to load the cyclocargos. However, none of the TNT customers complained about the quality of service. For TNT, delivering through the MD was twice as expensive as before. However, they feel it is possible to further decrease the operational costs by using the MD at its full capacity (the MD was only used at 40% of its full capacity) and by further refining the handling. A multi-actor multi-criteria analysis (MAMCA) of the MD concept revealed under which conditions it would become a more profitable concept to TNT Express: internalised external costs, higher capacity use and higher drop density. The MAMCA also revealed that the benefits are mostly for the other stakeholders, especially society.