1105
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
1105 points (95.5% liked)
Fuck Cars
12636 readers
645 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I only demand the raw ingredients to be grown halfway around the world, shipped by climate-controlled container in giant cargo boats, trucked from the port to the backstore, kept in refrigerated display cases, and sold in disposable containers.
But it's the last mile that's going to change the world, you see.
It actually is the last mile that matters. When shipped half way around the world it's in bulk. The amount of fuel per unit of food is surprisingly low.
For the last mile you're not getting 100 meals delivered even though they would fit in the car. The fuel to food ratio is insane for 1 meal.
Of course buying local is better when you have the option, but it doesn't make nearly as much of a difference as last mile delivery.
Not only fuel to food ratio, but also the amount of labor. If it takes someone 20 minutes to deliver your food, including their return trip), that is 1/3 of an hour of labor.
I know this sub is focused on the vehicle use and ridiculous inefficiency of this in terms of fuel, but the labor to have someone do this is what really runs up the bill. I suppose that's a good thing, because it limits demand.
Gig delivery method is also the most inefficient way to do this. Some people cite medical reasons why they can't leave the house, but many grocery stores manage their own deliveries. When the store handles it, the delivery goes from Store to Point A to Point B... Gig goes from Home to Store to Point A to Store to Point B...
Are you trying to say food delivery could be efficient? I'm not sure if I'm reading this correctly, because even as someone who isn't involved in shipping logistics but is involved in some conceptually adjacent logistics, it's absolutely clear to me why the last mile is harder/more expensive than the "other miles". Especially in takeout food delivery because of the additional constraints.
Or is this sort of like, pro super-independence and we should avoid shipping in general and prefer local resources?