Last-mile delivery

Last-mile delivery refers to the final stretch of a shipment's journey — the part after a package leaves the warehouse or distribution center and finally arrives at the customer's doorstep.

If you think of a package's whole journey as a marathon, the last mile is the final few hundred meters before the finish line. It covers the shortest distance, but because every address, every traffic condition, and every customer's preferred delivery method is different, it's often considered the most labor-intensive and costly part of the whole process.

Recently, more companies have started using AI to figure out which delivery method is fastest and cheapest for this final stretch. Instead of having people manually pick routes and delivery vehicles one by one, AI now calculates it, sharply cutting the time it takes to make that decision.

In the article, Omnistar — built by delivery company OneRail using NVIDIA technology — is said to have cut last-mile delivery decisions from 20 minutes down to 2 minutes 30 seconds. It's important not to confuse the term: last-mile delivery isn't the name of an AI technology, it's the specific stage of the logistics industry (the final delivery step) that AI is trying to improve.