Bicycle postal delivery service trials first post box in Bristol

The issue with bikes and Royal mail is capacity most rounds can fill a trolly, a bike needs with most rounds mail to be dropped off since it will not fit on the bike.

this is a wasteful time wise, and equally bikes work best with gaps between deliveries this is not the case for urban rounds.

For companies such as this, they can chose what sort of mail, and with larger more sparse rounds, bikes make much more sense, as they used to do for royal mail, before the boom in mailsort and amazon/ebay packages etc.

bikes did make sense for posties years back in some areas, though not all. But mail volumes have changed posties call to most houses most days now. where as back in the day they might only call to a few houses.

rogermerriman wrote:

The issue with bikes and Royal mail is capacity most rounds can fill a trolly, a bike needs with most rounds mail to be dropped off since it will not fit on the bike.

Wow, a whole trolley. Just to help the users of this site picture that amount, what would you say that is in cargo bikes?

That is between 5 and 7 full bags and 80-150kg for most cargo bikes this is over capacity, and over the frame weight limit. for most bikes need to restock at least once so probably two bikes per trolly.

with the universal delivery and the increase in mailsort (junk mail for most part) and door to door (leaflets) the increased delivery points posties are delivering too, plus the increased amount of mail per round. the writing has been on the wall for bikes for delivery, for a long time.

rogermerriman wrote:

That is between 5 and 7 full bags and 80-150kg for most cargo bikes this is over capacity, and over the frame weight limit. for most bikes need to restock at least once so probably two bikes per trolly.

with the universal delivery and the increase in mailsort (junk mail for most part) and door to door (leaflets) the increased delivery points posties are delivering too, plus the increased amount of mail per round. the writing has been on the wall for bikes for delivery, for a long time.

Well, I know someone who was a TNT/Whistle delivery man. Those bikes weighed an absolute ton, a Boris bike feels like the lighted carbon fiber frame afterwards. But he said on a round he would carry something like 50kg in the huge panniers on the back, and might do more than one round per day. But for the area he was covering, it would have taken him forever to do on foot with a trolley.

Meanwhile in Germany, you see postman using things like these -

Or if you want something a little bigger, how about some of DHL's new toys.

If you think the writing is on the wall for the bike to make deliveries, it sounds as though you're as shortsighted as the management in the Royal Mail.

bikebot wrote:

rogermerriman wrote:

That is between 5 and 7 full bags and 80-150kg for most cargo bikes this is over capacity, and over the frame weight limit. for most bikes need to restock at least once so probably two bikes per trolly.

with the universal delivery and the increase in mailsort (junk mail for most part) and door to door (leaflets) the increased delivery points posties are delivering too, plus the increased amount of mail per round. the writing has been on the wall for bikes for delivery, for a long time.

Well, I know someone who was a TNT/Whistle delivery man.

and might do more than one round per day. But for the area he was covering, it would have taken him forever to do on foot with a trolley.

snipped to show salient points uk post unless your very lucky rounds will take a full shift.

if a bike can do it faster, then a round has significant dead walks or more likely has less dense rounds.

That is the point uk rounds a postie now expects to call to most delivery points, back in the day you'd only call to a few.

companies like TNT and so on still have much less dense rounds with much greater gaps, those sort of rounds a bike makes perfect sense.

But for royal mail, fewer and fewer rounds do now.