Peer-to-peer (P2P) delivery is the Uber of parcel delivery. Think of it this way – you are travelling across the country to see your family. Your car is empty, apart from the backpack that you have packed for the week. Meanwhile, an elderly person from your town wants to send a package to her granddaughter, who happens to live in the city you are travelling to. It would be super easy for you to take the package with you as you’re already driving that way.
This is exactly what P2P delivery is about. It utilises spare capacity to its advantage. The interest in platforms that enable P2P delivery has greatly increased among industry players. An example of such a platform is BlaBlaCar, which lets you carpool with people that are on their way to the same destination as you.
This P2P phenomenon has gained a lot of traction in recent years. Even though it’s only a tiny fraction of the global parcel delivery market, it falls into the sharing economy trend that is expected to grow significantly in the coming years.
From the data analysed, we managed to identify 3 main groups of delivery platforms that have received the greatest amount of interest: last mile, end-to-end and goods-specific. These are further discussed later on in the article.