Is flying mail the future for Australia Post? / ABC Local Adelaide
Did you hear the one about your snail mail turning into carrier pigeon mail? Well Sonya Feldoff of ABC Afternoons Adelaide did and it started one of our regular chats about the future of postal and general deliveries.
Reprising an earlier on air conversation I had with Brisbane ABC we chatted about the reality that only 2.1% of mail delivered is person to person, 45.4% is business to business and 36.2% is business to consumer, so the decline in physical mail is due to a whole raft of reasons fanned by technology advancement including email, pay on-line options and a multitude of communication tools like Facebook, snapchat, twitter, Skype and the list goes on.
The other seismic change is of course our unending desire for instant communication rather than a it’s in the post and you should get it in a couple of days pace.
The discussion soon turned to delivery of parcels which is growing and some of the different business models on the rise including services that accept delivery for you during the day and then re deliver it to you at night or at a time more convenient to you.
Other models include a crowdsourced approach where other shoppers may elect to deliver your goods to you for a fee which has been trialled by Ikea; using a casualised labour website like Airtasker to find someone to pick it up or deliver it for you and of course the one that had listeners calling in the drone and self driving car deliveries.
Listener Brad was most keen on having his parcels delivered to him by a fully autonomous driverless van and wasn’t all that excited when I suggested he may be waiting about 15 years or so for his next parcel, but Jenny of Port Augusta made a great point that in country and regional areas they’ve always had crowdsourced deliveries with neighbours helping neighbours doing deliveries, pick ups and drop offs for each other.
Great conversation around an industry and entrenched way of doing something that we always assumed would go on for ever and is now falling apart, seeing huge staff sackings and forcing users and suppliers to re-imagine how, where, when and what of getting mail and parcel deliveries so have a listen now (12 minutes 48 seconds) and then share your thoughts on tomorrow’s world of mail and parcel deliveries.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What has actually happened with drone delivery since 2015 and what does it reveal?
Drone delivery since 2015 has followed the pattern of a technology that works technically but faces non-technical barriers to deployment: Wing (Alphabet), Amazon Prime Air, and several specialist operators have achieved regulatory approval for limited commercial operations in specific contexts — suburban medical and consumer delivery in geofenced areas; Australia has been among the more permissive regulatory environments globally, with Wing operating commercial delivery services in Canberra suburbs since 2019; and the use case that has proven most compelling is not general consumer delivery (where the economics and logistics are complex) but high-priority, time-sensitive delivery in specific contexts — medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, food delivery in suburban environments. The limitations that have slowed broader deployment include: payload weight limits, range constraints, weather sensitivity, urban airspace management complexity, and the noise impact on residential areas.
Q: What is the genuine case for drone delivery in regional and remote Australia?
The genuine case for drone delivery in regional Australia is stronger than in metropolitan areas, for structural reasons: the road infrastructure cost of serving low-density regions is high and the service frequency is limited; the time-sensitive delivery use cases (medical supplies, urgent parts, perishable goods) are more consequential when the alternative is hours of road travel or next-day service; the airspace management challenge is simpler in low-density areas without complex urban obstacle environments; and the economic case for reducing the cost of last-mile delivery in areas where current costs are high is clearer than in metropolitan areas with dense population and competitive delivery markets. The regulatory and infrastructure challenge remains significant, but the value proposition for genuine remote applications is more compelling than the consumer convenience framing that dominates urban drone delivery discussion.
Q: What does drone delivery signal about the future of physical distribution infrastructure broadly?
Drone delivery is one signal in a broader transformation of physical distribution: the combination of drone delivery (for small, time-sensitive, light payloads), autonomous ground vehicles (for heavier, less time-sensitive urban delivery), and sophisticated sorting and logistics automation is creating a physical distribution infrastructure that looks fundamentally different from the one built around human drivers and fixed-route networks; the implications for Australia Post and similar organisations are significant — their physical infrastructure (sorting centres, delivery fleet, post office network) was designed for a specific logistics model that is changing; and the equity implications of the transition deserve attention — communities that are less economically attractive for advanced logistics (lower density, lower average income, higher service cost) risk being left on legacy infrastructure while more attractive markets receive the efficiency benefits of new technology.
Q: How can I book Morris Misel for a logistics futures, technology and regional Australia, or innovation keynote?
Contact the booking team at morrismisel.com/event-organisers.
Did you hear the one about your snail mail turning into carrier pigeon mail? Well Sonya Feldoff of ABC Afternoons Adelaide did and it started one of our regular chats about the future of postal and general deliveries. Reprising an earlier on air conversation I had with Brisbane A.
The window between a signal arriving and it demanding a response is shortening. flying mail the future for Australia Post is already shaping strategy conversations in forward-looking organisations. Treating it as a future concern rather than a present one builds a preparedness gap that will have to be closed under pressure.
The most important question is not whether flying mail the future for Australia Post will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
