America's Last Mile, Vehicle by Vehicle[MICROMOBILITY PRO]Cargo bikes, e-quads, robots and drones are changing how deliveries cover the final few blocks. Here’s how each vehicle fits into America’s evolving last mile.
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Drawing on insights from more than 3k micromobility users in Germany and the UK, the session will explore changing mobility habits, purchasing behaviour, vehicle preferences and what these shifts mean for the future of micromobility in Europe. Darius Scurtu and Kathrin Kiefer from McKinsey’s Center for Future Mobility will share the findings and discuss what they reveal about where the market is heading. Contents
Introduction
On Earth Day in 2025, New York City marked off a stretch of curb on Amsterdam Avenue at West 85th Street and gave it to a delivery company. Trucks could pull in, unload, and hand their packages to cargo bikes and handcarts for the last few blocks. It was the first of three microhubs the city planned for the Upper West Side, set aside for Amazon, Net Zero Logistics and UPS. The city’s reason was simple, nearly 90% of goods in New York arrive by truck, and the city expects the amount of goods moving through the five boroughs to grow by nearly 70% over the next 20 years. One in five New Yorkers now gets a package four or more days a week. Amazon says New Yorkers receive more than 2m deliveries every day. That last stretch is also the expensive part. A 2025 academic review, citing earlier industry data, puts last mile delivery at about 40% of total supply chain costs in the US, not counting pickup and sorting. So who, and what, is actually making those final trips now? Over the time, we have looked at each of these vehicles on its own. This piece puts them side by side. The trouble at the curbA delivery van is built to carry a lot and drive far. In a dense city, it spends most of its day doing neither.
Researchers at the University of Washington’s Urban Freight Lab found that about 80% of a delivery driver’s time is spent parked at the curb, with most of the actual delivery happening on foot. The same report notes that last mile fulfillment centers in the US sit about 15 miles from urban cores, on average. So the van drives a long way in, then waits... Continue reading this post for free in the Substack app
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