Thread: Why Us??

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

I take your point Bob, but heh heh we can make numbers tell us whatever we want really. To me, "IT & Related" has places in manufacturing (not here though), edu & training, Retail. May be not so much bricks and mortar retail in the coming years, as online selling completes its take over of that industry (which will create even more IT related jobs).

I wouldn't be banking on too many jobs being available long term from on-line retail. Amazon does has ~ 300,0000 full time employees and hires around 100,00 extra around Xmas but the majority of these are repetitive mind numbing tasks like sorting stuff into boxes, or driving forklifts etc. All of these processes including the delivery are eventually going to be automated so the total numbers of folks employed in on-line retail will be less than comparable volume bricks and mortar stores.

I also don't think there's ever going to be a high demand for hard core IT people because the jobs they do are also increasingly automated.

Retail as we know (even the on-line version) could change significantly with the advent of self driving vehicles.

Here's an interesting quote from a US newspaper (https://www.theatlantic.com/business...f-2017/522384/)

Finally, a brief prediction. One of the mistakes people make when thinking about the future is to think that they are watching the final act of the play. Mobile shopping might be the most transformative force in retail—today. But self-driving cars could change retail as much as smartphones.
Once autonomous vehicles are cheap, safe, and plentiful, retail and logistics companies could buy up millions, seeing that cars can be stores and streets are the ultimate real estate. In fact, self-driving cars could make shopping space nearly obsolete in some areas. CVS could have hundreds of self-driving minivans stocked with merchandise roving the suburbs all day and night, ready to be summoned to somebody’s home by smartphone. A new luxury-watch brand in 2025 might not spring for an Upper East Side storefront, but maybe its autonomous showroom vehicle could circle the neighborhood, waiting to be summoned to the doorstep of a tony apartment building. Autonomous retail will create new conveniences and traffic headaches, require new regulations, and inspire new business strategies that could take even more businesses out of commercial real estate. The future of retail could be even weirder yet.

Originally Posted by BobL

Retail as we know (even the on-line version) could change significantly with the advent of self driving vehicles.

Here's an interesting quote from a US newspaper (https://www.theatlantic.com/business...f-2017/522384/)

They'd need to make sure they have top notch security to come driving around my neighbourhood! haha. I'd half expect to wake up in the morning and have 47 Mobile Retailers on bricks and gutted of everything that isn't welded down

Originally Posted by Dibbers

They'd need to make sure they have top notch security to come driving around my neighbourhood! haha. I'd half expect to wake up in the morning and have 47 Mobile Retailers on bricks and gutted of everything that isn't welded down

We could start placing bets on when the first delivery drone will be brought down by some projectile or other.

I think the location would impact the odds. Over here in yagoona.... id give it 30 seconds

Sent using Tapatalk

As a postie I don't see the delivery of goods by drones becoming a reality in the near future. CASA for one won't let it happen, security of the goods is at high risk, the shear volume of goods being delivered by AP alone would mean the sky's would be black with swarms of drones in the sky to meet demand on a daily basis. The public would be outraged at the noise. Not to mention weather conditions hampering the operation. Trees are another major issue to navigate. It's a nice dream but the reality is a technical and logistical nightmare.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Drone deliveries are happening right now.





and military applications where they released 1000 drones to acts as an attack mega-swarm.



Delivering the post/parcels or dropping things over prison fences is trivial.

Autonomous spying????

Originally Posted by Cal

As a postie I don't see the delivery of goods by drones becoming a reality in the near future. CASA for one won't let it happen, security of the goods is at high risk, the shear volume of goods being delivered by AP alone would mean the sky's would be black with swarms of drones in the sky to meet demand on a daily basis. The public would be outraged at the noise. Not to mention weather conditions hampering the operation. Trees are another major issue to navigate. It's a nice dream but the reality is a technical and logistical nightmare.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I agree, as usual it will take Australia and the US a long time to get their red tape sorted. Amazon and Google are investing in drone delivery in a huge way so it will probably be faster than we think. In less red tape areas like Iceland it's already happening. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/22/worl...n-iceland.html

AP can't even bring themselves to get customers to put up decent letterboxes in fear of upsetting them or getting customers to move their flaming bins away from the letterbox, how are parcel drops from drones going to work? Are they going to force customers to buy specific parcel lockers at home that suit drone drops? AP is useless at getting people to conform for safe and efficient delivery. Still can't see it happening any time soon.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't see it as any sort of a compulsory arrangement for a long time. Initially it will only be for rapid delivery to inner city addresses. The customer will have to request drone delivery AND make the necessary provision, and maybe even pay extra for the faster delivery. Most offices and apartments with open restricted access upper storey balconies won't need a secure parcel locker. Folks like me who already get most of their low value deliveries left out of direct sight from the road/footpath on their front veranda won't need one either. I've just looked up the number of items I've had delivered in the last 3 months and it comes to 63 and 60 of those I requested be left by the front door. I realise this doesn't work every where.

I hear what you are saying Bob, I am looking also at the reasoning of reducing workforce and relying on machines to do our work for us as has been mentioned in other posts. At the quantities of parcels delivered on a daily basis now by AP and not even projecting figures into the future or including deliveries from all other current or future logistics companies, there would be millions of individual flights per day per state if it was to happen tomorrow let alone into the future. I'm not saying it won't happen some time in the distant future but I do dread the day that it does, the world will be a sad noisy and ugly place.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by Cal

I'm not saying it won't happen some time in the distant future but I do dread the day that it does, the world will be a sad noisy and ugly place.

In the last few months because I have been working on electronics in my study at the front of the house. As soon as anyone pulls up in the drive the dogs let me know so I see most of the deliveries being made and as I said I have had 63 items delivered and SWMBO has probably around 30 and I reckon I have seen at least half of these. I've never seen an AP employee doing this but I have a seen some couriers being less than careful with deliveries. This varies from just dropping items onto the veranda floor, to a full lob over the veranda railings. One courier threw an electrical meter (box was clearly marked as fragile etc) over the railings, luckily the box was well padded and it landed in a pram which he would not have been able to see . By the time I went out to have a go at the courier he was gone - I did call the company and registered a complaint but it sounded like water off a ducks back. Apart from a few electronics components that suffered from bent connection pins all other parcels have survived. Following these experiences you can probably see why I am happy for drones to replace these drongos.

Youtube has plenty of examples of this sort of behaviour by couriers (look up UPS delivery fails).

Recently for higher value orders and pickups we have placed a large sturdy wooden blanket type box on the front veranda and we request (by written instruction on orders) that the items be picked up from or placed inside the box. It's early days yet , some couriers can seem to follow instructions - others not. have been meaning to bolt the box to the veranda floor and set the box up so that it is self locking which would work for the first but not subsequent deliveries of the day. It would not be too hard to set up something similar for drones to access.

I can sympathise with you there Bob, some contractors are just plain useless. Part of the issue is the low $$ and high volume they are expected to deliver in any given day, they do work for peanuts if they are a contractor working for a contractor, as low as a $1 per parcel. Not an easy way to make a living. I am not saying that it makes it an acceptable practice to lob parcels over a fence though, that's pretty poor form. I can see drones having their place, I just don't look forward to the buzz in the sky that will come with it. It also begs the question of how we will feel about our privacy, how will we know that the drone overhead is from a parcel company versus just someone spying on us??
I want to move further into the stocks before this happens [emoji53]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by issatree

Hi to you all,
I might get into a bit of hot water here for what I wood like to say.
I see these Adds on TV for us to donate money to these Overseas People who look after all these Starving Children. I think there are 2 of them.
Now I'm not saying don't, but why us.
Meaning, what about all those Billionaires, Millionaires, and the like, who have more than I think, wood know what to do with it.
If most of them give 1 Million each, then to my way of thinking that should solve the problem.
Unbeknown to me of course, that many of them do so, so why these Adds on TV.
Has been said, that if you gave $1, the Children concerned get approx. 20 cents.
Maybe I'm a touch ignorant of the situation, and don't get me wrong I really feel for these People & Children, but I think these Money People could do far more than we could.

Call the cops Lewis, your thread's been hijacked.