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Amazon is taking on the traditional postman by delivering parcels on foot.
Couriers will ditch their vehicles and carry packages on a handcart in a pilot programme in the London boroughs of Hackney, Westminster and Islington.
The new service, which is part of a wider effort to cut carbon emissions from Amazon’s fleet of delivery vans, means staff will cross paths with postal workers employed by the 509-year-old Royal Mail.
Nicola Fyfe, of Amazon Logistics, said the business would consider expanding its on-foot deliveries to other UK cities if it proved a success.
She said: “When you look at the on-foot walker deliveries, and couple them up with our electric bike deliveries and our electric vans – the three of them working together – really helps bring a sustainable delivery solution.”
These three forms of zero-emission delivery now cover 70pc of London’s Congestion Charge zone, Amazon said. Ms Fyfe said it also helped when planning deliveries in pedestrianised zones and low-traffic networks.
Amazon has also expanded its deliveries by electric cargo bike to Belfast and Norwich, joining London, Manchester and Glasgow. The technology giant has said it is investing £300m in cutting emissions from its UK delivery operations.
Amazon has also expanded its deliveries by electric cargo bike in an attempt to reduce its carbon footprint – Matt Alexander/PA
As part of this, Amazon said it would start transporting more packages by rail in Britain, beginning with the fully-electric West Coast Main Line between Scotland and the Midlands.
Products will be unloaded from train carriages and sorted at local delivery centres. Royal Mail ended its “night mail” train service last year.
The company also confirmed its largest ever order of electric HGVs on Tuesday, which will include 140 electric Mercedes Benz haulers and eight Volvo trucks. Its trucks will have a range of 310 miles on a full charge.
The vehicles will expand Amazon’s fleet of green trucks to around 160. The order of electric trucks is a record for any company in the UK.
Amazon said it expected the green transport to carry 300m packages each year once it is operational.
It will also install fast-chargers at key points in its logistic network that can boost the batteries of its trucks from 20pc to 80pc in an hour.
The company’s launch of on-foot deliveries in the UK follows similar trials in New York and Paris, where it has used people-power to avoid congestion and meet demands for next day and same day deliveries from customers.
While it is a customer of the postal service, Amazon has a sprawling logistics division for deliveries from its Amazon.com site.
It is also growing its shipping arm, which collects parcels from retailers directly and delivers them to customers, rather than sending them from a central fulfilment centre.
Despite being Britain’s biggest parcel company, Royal Mail has been grappling with a long-term decline in letter deliveries and a growing challenge from companies such as Evri and Amazon in parcels amid soaring demand for online shopping since the pandemic.
Its postmen walk up to 1bn steps every day and half of the Royal Mail’s routes are largely on foot, with two-thirds of packages still delivered by legwork.
Alexander Paterson, an analyst at Peel Hunt, said Royal Mail risked losing business to Amazon.
He said: “Royal Mail has very high fixed costs and low margins even in good years, and is therefore very highly operationally geared.
“If Amazon was to roll out its own delivery service in areas of high population density and high numbers of parcels per address, it would present challenges for Royal Mail.”
Last year, the Government gave the green light to a £3.6bn takeover of Royal Mail by Czech tycoon Daniel Kretinsky.
The postal service is also pushing for an overhaul of its universal service obligation, which requires it to deliver letters six days a week.
Royal Mail is planning to trial a reduced service this year that will see some areas deprived of second-class letter deliveries on Saturdays. Regulator Ofcom is expected to launch a consultation on the proposals in the coming weeks.
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