Re:Inefficient, but Smart
by marcus_holmes on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @06:04AM
(#23699800)
agreed, but that's not driven by high labour costs. That's driven by scale, which is a product of consolidation and vertical integration.
The big box store has (let's say) 20 deliveries a day to make, because it's serving a larger proportion of the market. So it becomes worth buying a big box truck and hiring a couple of guys to make all those deliveries.
The small retail store has (presumably) fewer deliveries to make, so they don't do delivery themselves. So the delivery is done on a case-by-case basis by the couple of guys in a pickup truck.
If the small store has more sales and more deliveries, it will eventually become worth them hiring a truck and drivers, and offering delivery to their customers. Again, not limited by labour costs, but by scale and vertical integration.
It makes everything bigger. Instead of a couple guys with a pick up truck making one delivery at a time it's a couple guys with a big box truck making multiple deliveries. Instead of one shop keep with their tiny shop you have one big shop. That scale allows efficiencies which drives down the labor per unit.