Parcel networks are optimised for total system efficiency rather than for any individual package.
Hub and spoke
Everything routed through central sorting facilities.
Which is why parcels travel apparently illogical routes.
Sortation
Automated systems handling large volumes overnight.
The final mile
The most expensive segment by a wide margin.
Which is where most delivery innovation is directed.
Failed deliveries
Repeat attempts multiplying cost.
Which is why collection points expanded.
Why the routing looks absurd
A parcel travelling in the wrong direction is going to a sorting hub, because sorting everything centrally is cheaper than sorting it locally.
Which is optimal for the network as a whole and looks irrational for any individual package.
The alternative, direct routing, would require far more sorting facilities and vehicles running at low utilisation.
Tracking
Scans at defined points rather than continuous location.
Which is why parcels appear to sit still.
Peak periods
Volumes multiplying at certain times of year.
Which networks staff up for temporarily.
Returns
Reverse logistics as a substantial and growing cost.
Working conditions
Delivery driver pay structures under scrutiny in several countries.
Why the final mile costs so much
Everything up to the local depot moves in bulk; from there each parcel is handled individually and delivered to a separate address.
Which means a large share of total cost is incurred in the last few kilometres.
Every innovation in the sector, from lockers to time slots to neighbour delivery, is aimed at that segment.
Delivery density
Cost per parcel falling with drops per street.
Which is why rural delivery is expensive.
Time slots
Narrow windows raising cost substantially.
Which is why they are charged for.
Carbon
Consolidated delivery generally producing fewer emissions than individual trips.
What helps
Accurate addresses, safe place instructions and collection points.
What has changed recently
Volumes grew enormously with online retail, and networks that were built for a smaller flow have been expanded continuously.
Which produced both the collection point networks and the pressure on delivery driver working conditions.
Same-day and next-day expectations have compounded the cost structure, and someone pays for that either in the price or in the conditions.
Sortation technology
Automated systems handling very high throughput.
Which is where most capital investment goes.
Address quality
Poor addresses causing a substantial share of failures.
Which senders can prevent.
Lockers and pickup points
Consolidating deliveries to one location.
Which reduces cost and emissions together.
Tracking expectations
Visibility improving and still not continuous.
Why it is worth knowing how these things work
Most of the systems that shape ordinary life are invisible by design. Nobody explains why a parcel took an odd route, why a film left a streaming service, why a wait in an emergency department extended, or why the price of a flight changed between two searches.
The absence of explanation is rarely deliberate concealment. It is that the people running these systems are solving their own problems, and the reasoning behind their decisions is obvious to them and completely opaque from outside.
Understanding the mechanism does not always change what you can do about it. It does remove a category of low-grade frustration that comes from assuming something is arbitrary, unfair or aimed at you personally when it is usually none of those things.
A note on sources
Where regulation is involved, national regulators publish the actual rules and they are generally clearer than press coverage of them. Where an industry is involved, trade publications aimed at people working in it are considerably more informative than consumer coverage.
Practices described here vary substantially between countries, and anything with legal, financial or medical consequences warrants checking against the rules that apply where you are.
The pattern that recurs
Across almost all of these systems, the same three things turn out to be true. The behaviour that looks irrational from outside is optimising for something the observer cannot see. The cost that seems unexplained is usually concentrated in one specific stage of the process. And the information that would resolve the confusion is generally published somewhere and read by nobody.
That last point is the most useful one. Regulators, operators and industry bodies publish an enormous amount of explanatory material that answers exactly the questions people complain about not being able to get answers to. It is dry, it is not promoted, and it is free.
What to do with any of this
Very little of it changes a decision on its own. What it changes is the ability to ask a better question: of a company, of a service, of a regulator, or of yourself before assuming that something went wrong.
A final caveat
Everything above describes general practice. Individual companies, jurisdictions and circumstances differ, sometimes substantially, and the rules change more often than summaries of them get updated.
Where a decision matters, the official source for your own country is worth the ten minutes it takes to check.