Summary of Door to Door

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Pulitzer Prize–winning author Edward Humes discusses the issues and concerns of the global transportation system in this comprehensive, insightful report on transport to and within the United States. As he proved in his fascinating book Garbology, Humes has a gift for humanizing industrial trends and making complex logistics easy to understand. He explains five significant trends shaping the “global transportation revolution”: containerization, digital 3D printing, the “re-shoring” of manufacturing back to the US from China, ride-sharing services and driverless vehicles. Humes, writing with a reporter’s deft hand, also offers recommendations for fixing the system’s ills, which include America’s worn out transportation infrastructure and the pollution that results from shipping items “door-to-door” around the globe. getAbstract recommends his detailed overview to investors, manufacturers, futurists, academics, and any consumer seeking to understand the complex US and global logistics systems.

In this summary, you will learn

  • How most goods move to and within the United States,
  • What factors led to the “global transportation revolution,”
  • What primary problems beset the US transportation system,
  • What trends shape the logistics and transportation sector, and
  • How self-driving cars influence the future of transportation.
 

About the Author

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author Edward Humes also wrote Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash and the PEN Award–winning No Matter How Loud I Shout.

 

Summary

The “Global Transportation Revolution”

Today’s efficient movement of goods by ship or plane constitutes a global transportation revolution. This system is a miraculous, “immense door-to-door machine” that delivers millions of products from all over the world to your home with maximum efficiency and minimum expense. The main elements of this revolution are: 1) containerization and the rise of massive container ships, 2) China’s push to become the world’s magnet for manufacturing outsourcing, and 3) the development of digital technology.

America’s modern transportation system requires a combination of brilliant planning, high-tech development and complex coordination. Amazon is a good example of the impact of high-tech on the transportation sector. Amazon operates robot warehouses. Its NextGen computers can predict what products customers plan to buy and institute the shipment of that merchandise to customers before any actual orders.

Americans spend $5 trillion in money and time each year on transportation. Of that figure, traffic jams cost $124 billion annually in lost productivity, a cost expected to increase 50% by 2030. The modern transportation ...

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    Valeriy Mitrokhin 2 years ago
    transport has always been there and will be as the cause of all ills, both pollution and the engine of progress