The wisdom and capacity of a crowd of people has
become a strong lever for effectively solving business
problems. Sourcing a workforce, funding a startup,
or performing networked research are just a few
examples of requisitioning resources from a crowd.
Applied to a distribution network, a crowd-based
approach may create substantial efficiency enhancements
on the last mile. The idea is simple: Commuters,
taxi drivers, or students can be paid to take over lastmile
delivery on the routes that they are traveling
anyway. Scaling up the number of these affiliates to
a large crowd of occasional carriers effectively takes
load off the delivery fleet