The opportunity
Speed up delivery times, reduce operational costs, lower carbon emissions from traditional delivery vehicles, and meet consumer demand for faster and more convenient shipping.
From “Article: The Future of Logistics & Supply Chain” (October 2018)
It’s not just trucks, big data, robotics and artificial intelligence are already taking over inventory management and warehousing. Today high-vision fully automated forklifts and other robotic and automated guided vehicles are an integral part of the logistics sector. They not only offer more efficiency, higher speed, safety and accuracy in picking and boarding orders for delivery but are also helping companies radically bring down the high costs of fuel and labor.
Experts say that automation and last-mile delivery will lead to unbundling of tasks and create several new jobs which increase the complementarity between human tasks and machine work like supervisors, network managers, fleet managers, drone logistics managers, sensor cleaners, maintenance staff etc.
So what are the key trends for 2018 and beyond? Industry experts say that the Internet of Things, robotics, last-mile delivery solutions will continue to fuel the growth of the sector and reshape its landscape. Cobots or collaborative robots that interact with humans and work with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will replace robots that operate with limited guidance.
From “The Trends Scorecard: Retail & Consumer - What I Predicted, and What Actually Happened” (July 2026)
The grade: — Hit, mostly. The big structural moves are real in 2026. “The stuff comes to us” is the dominant pattern. The car genuinely has become a shopping cart with payment built in. And the reinvention of retail real estate is exactly on script — struggling malls are being converted into experience and entertainment destinations on one hand, and into last-mile logistics hubs, fulfilment centers and “dark” distribution space on the other. The one piece running behind the paragraph is the literal “drone pads on every driveway” image — which brings us to the prediction I want to flag honestly.
I leaned into this one hard, more than once. In 2018, in an interview for a logistics magazine, and again in a 2020 post built around one of my favorite lines, I painted a near-future of ubiquitous drone delivery landing on pads built into people’s driveways. “Driveway dronepads. Automatic robo-lockers. These two innovations with last mile delivery will forever change global supply chains!” I’m observing how one my clients - a luxury home builder in Houston - actually plans to include ‘delivery drone pads’ as a part of every driveway for future builds. That might be combined with automatic storage lockers which will automatically grab and store just-delivered packages for safe-keeping! We will see the mainstreaming of local drone delivery tech in major urban centres faster than we might think.
The grade: — Too optimistic, at least on the “faster than we might think” part. Here is the honest accounting. The direction was right. Last-mile delivery did become the most fought-over, most heavily invested battleground in all of retail. Sidewalk delivery bots are real. Robotic lockers and automated parcel pickup are real and increasingly common. And drone delivery does exist in 2026 — in specific corridors, specific suburbs, specific partnerships. But “every driveway has a dronepad” and “drone delivery is mainstreamed in major urban centres”? Not in 2026. Regulation, airspace, noise, economics and weather all turned out to be harder than the technology. This is the classic futurist trap, and I walked right into it: I overestimated the speed of the visible, dramatic innovation (drones overhead) and slightly underestimated the boring one that actually won (massive, ground-based, software-driven fulfilment networks). I will own that.
From “Daily Inspiration: Retail, Supply Chain, Logistics - “Bring on tomorrow!”” (June 2024)
The topic? The acceleration of supply chain, retail, AI, logistics, warehousing, shipping and last-mile technologies, and more. I was hard at work up there!
- Omnichannel forever - in essence, every single retailer has to have a physical location, e-commerce delivery, in-store pickup, and soon - drone delivery!
according to Market Research Future, the global omnichannel retail market’s value is expected to exceed $5.36 billion in 2023.
Read the full pieces on jimcarroll.com:
Article: The Future of Logistics & Supply Chain
The Trends Scorecard: Retail & Consumer - What I Predicted, and What Actually Happened
Daily Inspiration: Retail, Supply Chain, Logistics - “Bring on tomorrow!”