Imagine for a moment that all the physical stores of Macy’s, Kohl’s, Wal-Mart. etc. all disappeared and to buy something at any of those department stores, you had to buy it online and have it home-delivered. In aggregate, would more of less fuel be used?
I’m thinking less fuel overall would be used… I would think merchandise would be trucked to a relatively fewer number of central warehouses instead of to hundreds or thousands of stores. That in itself would be more efficient since the trucks would be more fully utilized, lowering the cost of freight per gallon.
Then, when the UPS, FedEx, USPS folks came to the warehouse, those trucks would be fairly full carting all that merchandise to the mail processing facility. Finally, when the merchandise was delivered to your house, the delivery trucks would choose the most optimal route and would stop at many houses along the way making things more efficient.
I know there are many variables (when you go to the store do you get many items or just one, how far do you live from the store, etc.), but would it be fair to say that a world with no physical department stores would use less fuel overall?
I have no idea, but I will say that people usually combine trips to make things more efficient. If you usually shop at the department store on the way home from work, you still have to drive to work. If you usually shop at the department store along with your grocery shopping, you still have to go grocery shopping.
Though it’s open to debate, I would venture to say that overall a fair amount of fuel would be saved.
As you mention, stores could be replaced by distribution centers and you could easily have one distribution center for a 500 mile radius versus several dozen (or more) stores.
You would conserve fuel by eliminating:
Cross shipments from stores (store A on one side of town is out of product X so they ship that one item from store B 25 miles away - essentially shipping the same product twice)
Customer driving to one store looking for an item, then has to drive across town to another location
Customer driving to the store when the product they want is out of stock and returning the following week to purchase, wasting that trip and doubling the amount of fuel used
Employees at all of the different stores needing to drive to work everyday.
Of course there would be increases in fuel used by delivery services, but I tend to think it would pale in comparison to the overall savings.
The same is essentially true for the major delivery companies: unless you live in a remote area, there’s probably a UPS truck that drives past your house every day. So the marginal fuel cost of one more deliver is roughly equivalent to a quick shopping trip on the way home from work. Adding to the fuel costs of brick and mortar shopping, there are all of the long car trips to pick up a few items. Taken to an extreme, there are the 100 mile round trips to gawk at the regional Ikea and buy a vase and some frozen meatballs.
This bit of newsbloggery cites a 2008 study concluding that online shopping is more efficient in 80% of cases, using 30% less energy on average.
Extrapolating from their numbers, I’d guess that brick and mortar shopping is only more efficient if you combine shopping trips and drive short distances.
Or don’t drive at all. I use a combination of public transportation (which would run whether I was on it or not) and walking to do my shopping. Depending on how the delivery routes are arranged, I would imagine that my online shopping uses either the same amount of fuel or less than my brick and mortar shopping.
If something is delivered to me, and it will not go through my letterbox (or needs to be signed for), and (as is almost always the case) I am not available to open the door, I get a note, and have to drive to the central post office to pick it up.
There is also the issue of returning goods which don’t fit, or are otherwise unsuitable. Not being able to try something on before purchasing makes it very likely that a significant percentage of all shipments will be returned. If I had to pull a figure out of thin air I could see it being maybe 30% (judging mainly from my wife’s online purchasing ).
I drive past three WalMarts, a KMart and two Targets to get to and from work every day. That doesn’t even begin to count all the grocery stores, bakeries and other stores in those strip malls.
The only extra driving I do is from the roadside to the parking spot and back again.
That said, the Postman comes to my mailbox five days per week too, so the difference is negligable. If we’re talking about a UPS truck that drives up the road anyway, the WalMart parking lot is roughly equivalent to the length of my cul-de-sac, so probably still no differentiator there.
I’m gonna say that the only real effect would be to increase the isolation of the populace. And this comes from a very active on-line shopper.
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