wikipedia says:
The last mile is the final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider to a customer. Usually referred to by the telecommunications and cable television industries, it is typically seen as an expensive challenge because "fanning out" wires and cables is a considerable physical undertaking.

Speaking loosely the last mile can also refer to other services: water pipes, sewage pipes, electrical cables, etc... There's a joke that says it's the 20% of the system that costs 80% of the total. What does this have to do with PO?

There have been endless debates on this forum as to how significant is fuel costs relative to (long haul travel) for example shipping containers 9,000 miles across the ocean. I think people are looking at this from the wrong angle. It is not the 9,000 miles that is expensive, it is the last 100 miles that is expensive. It is the unloading of the containers onto 1,000 trucks and "fanning out" the final leg of the travel to 1,000 different locations that is expensive. The salary of 1,000 truck drivers is definitely more then a single ship's crew. The cost of maintenance for 1,000 trucks is more then a single ship. The last 100 miles costs more then the first 9,000 miles. It is the cost of the last mile that will make or break human society in a post PO world and there is only 1 vehicle that can accommodate the last mile --> trucks. Therefore it is the cost of running trucks that will determine the fate of humanity: not planes, trains, and ships.

Most people live in suburbia. That's a whole lot of "fanning out" to do at a huge cost. You notice some environmentalists talk about EV (electric vehicle) cars like it's going to save the world? How come nobody talks about EV-trucks? If a stack of Li-ion batteries costs $40,000 for a 3,000 lbs car imagine how much it would take for a loaded 70,000 lbs big rig truck? Furthermore trucks put in a lot more miles then cars so the batteries would need to be replaced more often. There's a reason why nobody talks about EV-trucks, because it doesn't look pretty. Will there be EV-trucks in the future? Maybe but not that many that's for sure. Suburbia will die-off not because it was too expensive to move something 5,000 but instead 50 miles.

good post thanks

Hub and spoke centralized distribution with less just in time delivery that will entail more inventory and therefore be more expensive. Just like in the developing world in many cases. Fortunately, the last mile can be made by locals in many ingenius and clever ways. However, in general, I certainly agree with your analysis vis a vie long distance versus last mile analysis! Cheers.

One thing to consider: link
Above is a link talking about CNG buses. Here in Los Angeles most or all of the metro buses and many school buses run on compressed natural gas (CNG).

link
Above is a link talking about converting the trucks in the Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor to natural gas. The LA/Long Beach harbor moves more goods in and out than any other harbor in the world due to East Asia. Therefore it is a major hub for trucking transportation and railway.

Obviously these are very small compared to the US/Worldwide trucking industry but at least they are beginning to switch from oil to natural gas. The only problem then becomes if we switched every large transportation vehicle to natural gas then we hit peak natural gas. And we start all over again.

joeltrout

Around here people ride motorcycles, quads, etc that last mile (actually couple'a miles) into town. It's walkable, not what most people would consider fun, but it is walkable or bike-able especially if you don't go fast.

Next time you're going somewhere 10-20 miles away on a bike, try puttering along slowly. Keep your speed around 10-12 miles an hour. You'll get there before you know it and feel like you never exerted yourself. Do it at say 18 MPH and it's a workout.

Same with walking. Don't try to set a speed record, just amble. Think about stuff. Whistle to yourself. Bird and plant watch. You'll find it's easy.

quick tutorial for those interested: "Just In Time"
Product distribution networks, from raw material to consumer, require a minimum fill levels to operate. Each step requires minimum operating inventories.

The entire inventory -and- the infrastructure to carry it every step from start to finish requires capital investment that is all shrink, no growth.

Analogy:

Do you want a large and expensive water pipe operating at low pressure and flow? Or do you want a high-velocity high-pressure pipe instead, when each deliver the same amount of flow?

"Just In Time" business/engineering philosophy is all about high-velocity low-inventory systems, and they exist all around us.

JIT constructs are high-efficiency systems, but not necessarily low-energy systems. Some of them will have to change when faced with permanent and significant increase in energy cost.

Unfortunately when JIT systems break down, entire production streams can stop almost instantly if one seemingly insignificant supplier has a failure in delivery. (I've seen million-dollar-an-hour auto assembly plants interrupted this way)

(That alone is a good reason to have a few weeks supplies on hand since JIT practices have been applied to your food and clothing networks also. )

At the end, "the last mile" is one of the first places where you'll see energy cost push ahead of inventory cost, so inventories will build. Many of you are doing it already.

Are you making fewer trips to the store?

Does all this shit mean that prices are going to go up or something?

Different kinds of battery technologies become practical in larger industrial vehicles that aren't practical in passenger vehicles, like molten salt. battery

Yeppers, that's where we're going!

That, and you won't be able to buy as much as you want when you want it.

I wish we had not torn down all the small town rail depots and "short line" railroads. Up until the 1930's, they served us well out here in the sticks, and reduced the last leg of the shipping journey to under 20 miles for most areas in the eastern half of the US. Maybe we can bring them back, electrified this time, and the interurban passenger rail, too.

That is a good point MD. JIT inventory management is definitely cheaper for corporations but when we look at the whole of society does it still pass the test? One thing is for certain JIT relies upon "spare capacity" within the transportation system. If you're going to run something "just in time" like an auto assembly line you cannot afford to have truck drivers get stuck in traffic and showing up 1 day late. Basically it takes "extra space" / "spare capacity" on the freeways to make this thing work and we all know who pays for the upkeep of freeways. JIT time requires the use of a "point to point" transport system. A "hub and spoke" system while more energy efficient takes too much time. For example a truck can deliver a load of Foster Farms California chicken to New York faster then a train because it can do it "point to point" (from the farm straight to the warehouse). I've talked to truck drivers before they said, (a truck with 2 drivers one sleeps while the other drives 10hr/day can make the trip in 2.5 days.
20hr driving/day * 2.5days == 50hr driving
50hr driving * 60mph == 3,000miles
California to New York in 2.5 days) --> that's pretty fast!

Using a train would require transferring the load from truck --> train (stopping along the way) --> truck aka (hub and spoke) that takes too much time and would not work for JIT. When truck drivers start breaking their axles b/c the taxpayers couldn't supply the funds to patch up the potholes on the freeways JIT is going to die-off.
Costco?

Private automobiles in the united states consume something like 146 billion gallons of gasoline per year[1], while semis consume something like 25 billion gallons of diesel per year[2]. I'm pretty sure that post peak, at least according to TOD's reckoning as to when we'll peak, suburbia will have more trouble staying populated because people can't afford the drive as opposed to having trouble with the cost of goods delivery, even with the current 3:2:1 crack spread. People moving away from suburbia could drop the costs of goods transport since it would reduce the cost/free up property for more warehousing.

In the time it'll take manufacturers to replace the private auto fleet with something more efficient, local, state, and national governments would likely be able to establish right of ways for electric rail, which I'm guessing would take off farther down the depletion curve. One last tidbit, the only vehicles I have seen consistently obeying the "Drive 55" motto have been the grocery trucks that go between the central warehouse and stores, so it isn't as if business isn't aware...

[1] link
[2] link

There's a good essay floating around out there on the net called "Death by JIT" which is worth looking up.

I sure wish there was a bus say along Rte. 89 into Prescott. I could walk the couple of miles out to it, and take it into town. It'd probably be $2 each way, or $5 round trip. That would be OK with me.

My solution is my small (250cc) bike. It's not all that fast, but I take the ranch-y route and it works fine. One gallon round trip for gas which right now is around $3, but of course you have to factor in tires and maintenance and stuff.

Of course with a bike your clothing tastes have to run to leather and denim, the average person would much rather just ride a bus thank you very much!

If I take ILP's last example and project it onto the last mile dilemma then, of course, anyone that has a motor scooter or small two stroke engine bike, say with a trailer on the back, might not just drive 'there and back' without, say stopping at the food depot/warehouse, to bring back a load of stuff that the local community needs. The small mark-up paying for his gas and time, while the community gains by each not having to make the same trip themselves. If I think of a small island then I can visualize the community planning its weekly or monthly schedule around the ship that calls on port bringing in everything the island lacks and taking away anything for sale or export. Its not perfect, but it works. For the USA this all sounds very primitive, but in places like Nepal, for example, these day to day decisions are a part of life.

MrBill,
I can see that working in our rural area, where small community groups ally themselves to reduce transport costs. I anticipate an evolving into something like the patchwork of European villages, more or less self sufficient for locally grown food and local resources.

In our area of Sou. Indiana, the population density is suitable for that, and has been organized that way only a couple generations back. No reason we can't go back to what worked in 1940, with updates in tech. If we can keep the Internet working, locals could efficiently organize trips to town for their needs.

I'm convinced that the answers to PO lie in a multitude of small solutions, not a magic, one-dose breakthrough. History is full of examples for the distribution problem. We would have to give up impulse-shopping, of course, and good riddance.