It always makes me happy when a delivery or courier company provides ‘realtime’ tracking.
I’ve worked in admin/IT at a courier company for almost 20 years and most of the time we resisted showing this, even though the technology was there. Driver’s almost always have multiple deliveries on board, and you cannot show a recipient the other locations a driver might have to stop at before the recipients location and when we provided the live tracking, this would constantly lead to complaints about when the customer perceived the arrival time should be. As delivery time predictions have improved, we are now more comfortable in showing this kind of tracking, as we can include a progress bar and ETA. However, personally I feel it’s outdated now, as we can send a notification, either when you’re the next drop or when we estimate the driver is X minutes away - I prefer that over watching a map.
I’ve always been interested in data, and only relatively recently got into the field for work.
Always interesting to see what data is available, and how we could utilize it with what constraints etc.
Suppose I were a nefarious criminal, and I want it to commit a low risk high reward crime, I would wait until boxing day / black Friday / big sale day and have me and a bunch of my friends order some items. Then track all the delivery trucks and rob them.
Let’s be honest, if you want to rob a delivery van, you don’t need to track them. Just hang out in a wealthy neighbourhood, and you’ll see one before long. Then jump them as they get out to deliver a package.
Of course you don’t want to attack a GPS monitored one, as if you pick one without the monitoring you can just steal the van.
I feel a bit weird giving you step by step instructions on how to do this 😆
Rebuttal: wealthy neighbourhoods have:
- the most security cameras and, potentially, paparazzi.
- the fastest police response times.
- better detective work because the victims are actually people of ‘importance’.
- possibly personal security
All the vans have GPS for ‘productivity’ tracking of the employees. You’re better off unloading it.
P.S. I don’t endorse criminal behaviour. This is all hypothetical :P
Hmm. I mentioned wealthy neighborhoods because they are more likely to be getting deliveries, and importantly, the stuff will be worth getting.
You make a good point about security systems and general police interest. Maybe some middle class neighbourhood would be best.
All the vans have GPS for ‘productivity’ tracking of the employees.
Not sure if you’re from NZ or noticed this is an NZ community, but I believe a majority of couriers here are independent contractors who own their own vans and get paid by the number if packages they deliver. I feel like it would be easier to track them via a company issued phone, but also you can track their productivity via the number of packages delivered so I’m not sure the location helps.
A year or two ago I purchased a snowboard from Hyperride, and the that was brilliant. Can’t quite remember what the service was, but you could track where the driver was in real time.
Amazon shows it, at least.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen it!
That would be great, especially when there’s a signature required.
The only other on I’ve seen was with Urgent Courier’s, really handy when expecting a package requiring signature.
“unauthorized pee break detected, please get back on route. Karen needs her meatloaf!”
