[StuBeeDoo]

I spent the final five years of my working as a supermarket home delivery driver.  Woodcote is absolutely spot-on regarding home deliveries.  The amount it costs the company must be astronomical.

A few of the things you wouldn't believe about a day in the life of just one driver.........

Sitting doing nothing but read for nearly two hours during the course of the shift, waiting for the allotted time to make the next delivery.  There's no point calling the customer to see if they will accept the delivery early because if they will you'll just have to repeat the process.  If you get back to the store too early you'll lose the time and, consequently, pay.
Pulling into the street where your next delivery is to see one of your colleagues from the same store already delivering to your customer's neighbour.
Then you drive 20+ miles to your next delivery, and then back again to the same street for the following one, then drive nearly all the way back to the one 20+ miles away for the one after that.  Four deliveries for nearly 90 miles covered when it could have been done in half the miles and time.

Why should I care about any of this?  I'm getting paid by the hour.  But as Woodcote says, it isn't a good business model by any stretch of the imagination.

The examples I've given aren't isolated incidents, they're regular occurrences.