Golden Decade: Logistics Becomes a New Infrastructure Step by Step

Forwarded from Jiuzhou Logistics Network 2022-10-18
It is not too much to describe the development of China's express delivery in the past decade with "a thousand miles in a day". From 2012 to 2021, China's express business volume climbed from 5.7 billion to 108.3 billion, an increase of 18 times.
In 2013, Lu Lin came to Beijing alone and took root in the express industry. In the past ten years, he shuttled through the streets and alleys of Beijing, and the daily average number of packages he handled increased by 10 times. During the rush, Lu Lin and millions of express delivery practitioners are touching the pulse of e-commerce consumption changes in a city, and also witnessing the transition of China's logistics industry from reckless to standardized development, from scale to quality.
In the past ten years, Tonglu Gang's Tongda was a family enterprise that grew out of recklessness and grew into a modern logistics enterprise in the capital market; Shunfeng, an express company that loves to buy airplanes, has expanded its business territory, with a market value of more than 230 billion yuan; Liu Qiangdong, who founded Jingdong Logistics with no money back in those days, firmly sat down half of the country by integrating warehouse and logistics; Ma Yun did not hesitate to use heavy money to urge rookies to master their skills of manoeuvring, and to cooperate with the following years of understanding; As a "national team", the postal service has taken ten years to slowly extend the distribution tentacles to every place in sight
In the past ten years, express delivery has become faster and higher in quality. The situation that the delivery can only be completed within one week no longer exists. Instead, the next day, the current day and the 30 minute delivery are available; Unmanned warehouse distribution and unmanned distribution continuously release manpower and also increase efficiency quietly. At present, express delivery has formed a tight network, and even has a great momentum of development in the supply chain field, feeding back the industry and actively linking upstream and downstream.
In the next decade, a new logistics network has been launched.

  01
Ten year blowout:
Express delivery volume increased by 18 times,
Digitally ban the grassland

Maybe it is fate that has just buried the foreshadowing. In the autumn of 2013, Lu Lin came to Beijing from Nanyang, Henan Province. He was overwhelmed by the traffic in big cities. In Beijing, where people are unfamiliar, the couriers who shuttle through the streets are Lu Lin's "living map". Where there is a small supermarket or a pharmacy, the courier will guide Lu Lin in time.

Later, Lu Lin also joined the ranks of couriers. At the beginning, Lulin needed to deliver more than 200 packages every day for picking, sorting, entering and loading. At that time, due to the inconsistent format of the waybill of various express companies, the paper face bill was not connected to the data platform. In addition to distribution, Lulin had to manually enter the face bill information in the later stage. At that time, he often got off work at more than ten o'clock in the evening. Many of his colleagues could not survive and left.
Fortunately, express enterprises do not want to be so extensive and backward all the time. They hope to improve human efficiency. In 2014, electronic face bill was widely spread in the express industry, and its utilization rate in private express enterprises rose from 5% to 60%. The data of business flow, logistics and consumer can finally be connected together, and the information chain behind the package has gradually become accurate and visual. By the end of 2019, the utilization rate of electronic waybills across the country had reached 98%.

In the past ten years, logistics enterprises have shown great enthusiasm for technology upgrading. Cainiao led the express delivery enterprises to add and introduce intelligent equipment. JD pushed Asia No.1 and other unmanned warehouses. When Yuantong, Yunda, Shentong, Zhongtong and others embraced capital in 2016, they directly said that they would invest in IT information, automated sorting and other aspects.
It was in 2019, when electronic face sheets were banned from quadruple sheets, that Lu Lin had his own rookie post station, and the delivery tools in his hands also changed from paper and pen to mobile phone sized gun machine, ticket printer with integrated operation and printing, and self-service pickup high racket meter placed in the post station. The number of dispatched pieces has also changed from the initial average daily of about 200 pieces to the current average daily of about 2000 pieces.
Express delivery practitioners like Lu Lin have changed from "minority" to "majority" in ten years. In 2010, the number of express delivery employees in China was still 540000, and in 2021, the number will be nearly 4.5 million. Of course, the speed of doubling the express volume is even more amazing. From 2012 to 2021, China's express business volume climbed from 5.7 billion to 108.3 billion, an increase of 18 times.

  02
Ten year dispute:
Exchange capital for resources,
Exchange price for market
Expanding market share, improving warehousing trunk lines, improving digital level, and reserving express talents are all inseparable from capital support. This may be a decade ago, one day, capital and express industry hit it off. In 2011, Fosun Chuangfu invested Yunda; At the beginning of 2013, Sequoia Capital invested in Zhongtong Express by purchasing old shares; In 2015, Alibaba Venture Capital, together with Yunfeng Fund, invested well... all kinds of capital cooperation provided reserves for the strong express delivery in the next ten years.
In order to expand their business territory and eat more markets, it is hard to see how many people can join together in the past ten years. From 2016 to 2017, Zhongtong successfully went to the United States, Yuantong and Shentong were backdoor listed, followed by Yunda and Shunfeng. In the following years, Ali used capital to connect the "Tongda system", JD "pulled black" Shentong, and the data war between Shunfeng and Cainiao inadvertently tore up the discord of interests among giants.
Of course, since the idea of teamwork emerged and the express enterprises put it into practice, this dispute, especially the price war, has never stopped for more than ten years. In 2006, Yuantong became a distribution service provider on Taobao, which quickly broke the peace of the express industry. Yu Weijiao, Yuantong's chairman, later recalled that before Taobao, Yuantong's charging standard was 18 yuan for trans provincial items and 12 yuan for intra provincial tickets. After cooperating with Taobao, the price was cut by a third directly.
Yuantong's move attracted a lot of abuse in the industry and within the company, but the sweetness of "a sudden increase of 2000 votes in daily business volume" also attracted many followers. For a while, the average price of express e-commerce items dropped from 15 yuan at the beginning to 5 yuan, and the e-commerce "parcel post area" expanded from the Yangtze River Delta to the central and western regions. The price war is hard to stop.
According to the data of the State Post Office, the average unit price of express delivery business in the first quarter of 2022 is 9.9 yuan, down 65.26% compared with 28.5 yuan in 2007. Therefore, in the middle of last year, the state and local governments successively issued policies to stop the disorderly price war in the express delivery market and require operators to provide express services at a price that is not lower than the cost. In July, the Ministry of Transport and other seven departments jointly issued the Opinions on Ensuring the Legal Rights and Interests of Couriers. Since this year, more than 20 cities, including Hebei, Fujian, Hubei and Henan, have signed the first local collective agreement on the express industry, which mostly involves the minimum wage standard, wage growth mechanism, working hours and treatment of the express industry.
With the continuous implementation of the policy and the tightening of the regulatory environment, the price war that has enveloped the express industry for more than ten years is finally coming to an end. Since the second half of last year, "Three Connections and One Access" and Baishijitu have successively announced an increase in fees to stabilize terminal outlets. In May this year, the single ticket prices of Shentong, Yuantong and Yunda express products increased by 23.19%, 23.24% and 23.27% year on year respectively.

  03
Ten year qualitative change:
Build an inter city economic artery,
To go to the village, factory and sea
"China's logistics industry has taken ten years to catch up with the efforts of the United States for nearly 100 years, which can be called a world miracle." Ma Yun acknowledged the rapid development of China's express at the 2017 Global Smart Logistics Summit. This sentence was pushed forward to 2011, and he still had a lot of dissatisfaction with express delivery in public: "The biggest obstacle to Taobao going up to 1 trillion next year is logistics."
As said above, e-commerce and logistics have been following suit for many years, and there are also mutual constraints in achieving mutual success. No matter how fast the development of express logistics is, it has been suffering from e-commerce's massive promotion of warehouse explosion, lost pieces, slow delivery, violent sorting, etc; Even if e-commerce has a more subdivided business, it is difficult to reach a deal as long as the express delivery is not available. Even so, the two sides have never stopped running in and seeking solutions in terms of technology investment, talent training, organizational structure, strategic deployment, etc.
For Lulin, who has always been in the front line of express delivery, he always feels the increasing pressure of terminal service. In order to solve the "last 100 meters" distribution problem of the express industry chain, Shunfeng, Jingdong, Cainiao and other enterprises have arranged terminal express cabinets in various cities. According to the data of Beijing Postal Administration, as of January 2021, more than 18000 sets of smart express cabinets have been built in the city, with more than 1.8 million outlets and 13% delivery rate.
Different from other cities in China, Beijing is a typical express delivery import city. Wang Yue, director of the Beijing Municipal Postal Administration, said that by 2020, the number of express deliveries in Beijing will have reached 1.3 times of the total number of deliveries. Therefore, it is particularly important to enable express deliveries into Beijing to be sorted quickly and delivered safely.
In the ten years of rapid development of express logistics, the trend of logistics integration in Beijing Tianjin Hebei has become increasingly obvious. The transport capacity of high-speed rail express and air express has been continuously enhanced. The application of intelligent facilities and equipment such as unmanned vehicles in Beijing has been accelerated. The infrastructure of various express companies is also gradually being built and improved.
It is understood that after Yuantong landed in North China Transfer Center in Langfang, Hebei in 2010, Shentong North China Transfer Center also started trial operation in September this year, with a planned daily output of 5 million orders. And Zhongtong Express will also build its north headquarters base in 2025. With the participation of more and more express enterprises, in the future, the integrated logistics development system of Beijing Tianjin Hebei has the opportunity to become one of the driving forces for the economic growth of Beijing Tianjin Hebei region.
The developed logistics network can undoubtedly make the blood relationship between cities closer, thus bursting out an amazing economic momentum. According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, the retail sales of online shopping in 2012 reached 1.26 trillion yuan, while the total retail sales of online shopping in 2021 reached 13.1 trillion yuan, accounting for nearly one-third of the total retail sales of 44.1 trillion yuan of consumer goods in China. The National Postal Management Conference predicted that the national express delivery business volume would reach 122.5 billion pieces in 2022, with a year-on-year growth of about 13%.
At the same time, express logistics is also moving towards towns and villages, or looking overseas to find the second growth curve. The reason is that the domestic express industry enters the stock market competition on the one hand, and the policy impact on the other hand. At the beginning of this year, the "Fourteenth Five Year" Postal Industry Development Plan of the State Post Office clearly proposed to express goods "into villages, factories and seas".
In the new decade, the development of China's express logistics industry from "big" to "strong" is imperative. In addition to "everyone", there are also countless "small homes" that have become better because of the development of express logistics.
"It is express delivery that gives us a sense of belonging in this city." Lu Lin said.
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