At present ( in the UK ) most courier delivery fleets stand idle in the evening after being out during the day missing deliveries to people who are in work. And having to call again the next day.
It perplexes me why they don't shift their delivery period six hours later to start at 15:00 and end at 21:00. That would cover both business and residential hours.
I would imagine that is because the highest margins are made off of next-day deliveries from business to business. They often guarantee these deliveries by 10 AM because many companies are willing to pay extra to ensure that their package is delivered by 10 AM.
Consumers, by contrast, are more interested in paying as little as possible for shipping. Shifting their delivery hours to accommodate a group of customers who aren't willing to pay extra for the service while simultaneously killing off business from their most profitable customers would likely be a poor business decision.
Maybe they feel that even people doing delivery jobs are entitled to be home with their family at the end of the day?
More to the point, maybe they feel that the higher wage costs for that kind of shift work aren't worth whatever cost savings in other areas it would provide.
So yeah, adding a second shift isn't unheard of. My grandpa worked second shift his whole life, and I worked third shift the whole way through college.
They would have to split the fleet, all business deliveries still need to be made 9-5.
Amazon have actually started doing this in reverse in the UK, you can set an address as a business address and your package should only be delivered 9-5. In practice the 'Amazon Logistics' drivers (the aforementioned blokes in cars) are terrible and rarely manage to get this right.
Before I graduated high school, I lived in rural-ish area where the nearest commercial couriers were 50+ minutes from my house to the north and about 90+ minutes to the south. Wal-Mart was literally my only choice for consumer goods, so I spent a good chunk of change online.
I always had the same driver for a certain courier. I asked him how often he had to come down that far, and if it was significantly out of the way compared to the rest of his route. He told me that there were occasionally other stops in my town, but it wasn't the norm. The city and the immediate suburbs were the vast majority of their deliveries. Driving 100 minutes round trip for a couple deliveries probably sucked.
Apart from that it's a good idea.
This is also an opportunity waiting to happen.
Because picking a delivery slot imposes a constraint which creates a cost for the delivery provider.
> Everybody has jobs. Everybody finds it annoying to buy something on line. You never know when it's going to turn up. You have to take a day off, and hope your driver is competent at his job.
Most everybody has jobs, but most people I know don't find it annoying to buy stuff online; many people can have packages delivered to work, and many people have no problems with packages delivered to their home when they aren't there.
> Why can't you just say "I'll be at home on Thursday after 5pm. Call me on #555-333-9999 if you have any issues". Courier delivers the package after 5pm on Thursday.
Because, as you note, everyone has jobs, and if there was no cost to request delivery times, pretty much everyone would request something like "after 5pm". Which would eliminate the freedom of delivery companies to efficiently use delivery vehicles. Which would drive up their costs.
Asking for something which imposes an additional constraint on the service provider which has a cost to fulfill either costs everyone extra to subsidize you, or must cost you extra.