Hardware Alone Won’t Solve the Package-Management Crisis

For years, lockers were the multifamily industry’s answer to the package management problem.

But now, as the number of parcels arriving at apartment communities continues to grow, operators are realizing the inadequacy of package lockers and unintelligent storage rooms.

Just as they once saw that associates alone were ill-equipped to handle the increasing number of parcels arriving at communities each day, apartment managers are beginning to see that lockers or storage areas are not the remedy either. 

A Brief History

Believe it or not, the average onsite team once was sufficient to handle the incoming stream of packages. It may seem like eons ago, but there actually was a time when Amazon wasn’t such a towering presence in our lives. When residents needed something from Target or Walmart, they actually drove to those stores and bought whatever they needed, instead of ordering them online.

However, online shopping has absolutely exploded and become part of the mainstream of our lives. According to eMarketer, global e-commerce retail sales – which totaled $1.3 trillion in 2014 – are expected to reach $4.9 trillion in 2021. That would be a jump of 265 percent.

As the number of packages arriving at apartment properties spiked, associates found themselves spending too much time dealing with drivers and trying to find a place to store parcels in the leasing office. They weren’t able to devote the necessary energy to signing new leases and caring for current residents.

So, operators sensibly turned to package lockers and unintelligent storage rooms to give delivery drivers an easy way to drop off packages and residents an easy way to pick them up while at the same time minimizing the burden on associates.

But now, package lockers and storage rooms themselves are presenting their own issues. To start with, lockers are expensive and don’t scale well, so they are not positioned to easily address an increasing package flow.

At the same time, lockers usually are not equipped to store very large items – think things like furniture, toilet paper, paper towels, tennis rackets and jumbo-sized packs of soft drinks and bottled water. As a result, these purchases sometimes have to be placed in the leasing office or an unsecured area.

Further Adding to the Complexity

Also, lockers are often not used in the most efficient manner. Think about a driver putting a slim envelope or a tiny parcel in a locker meant for big packages. This happens all the time and results in a huge amount of wasted space. I jokingly call it “storing air.” But, it is in reality what is happening.

Additionally, many drivers don’t place their deliveries in the package lockers at all. Now, this could be because the lockers are already full (without accompanying software and notification systems, apartment communities can struggle to get their residents to retrieve packages). However, too often this happens because the drivers are just untrained or in too much of a hurry to use the lockers. 

A New Day Has Arrived

In the end, apartment operators will need to employ a multi-pronged approach to getting their package-management woes under control. This approach will have to encompass logistics software, hardware and the oversight of onsite associates. By embracing a new era in package management, operators can move packages in and out of storage spaces quickly – and minimize the amount of space they have to dedicate to storage – and also free up associates to focus on leasing and resident care.