ANALYSIS OF TRUCK DELIVERIES IN A SMALL BUSINESS DISTRICT

The nature of goods deliveries in a small commercial district in Pittsburgh was analyzed. The considerations in choice of the site were the expected cooperation from merchants, the diversity of store types available for analysis, and a high level of business activity. The surveys collected data on several aspects of the delivery process and its relationship to related activities in two phases. The first phase involved interviews at 59 stores in two blocks of the study site. The second phase involved recording truck pickup-and-delivery movements for one week in each block. The 400 observations covered the 8 a.m. to 12 n. period each day. The distributions in the data identified such things as hourly and daily delivery patterns, delivery times, and total number of deliveries to particular stores. Multiple linear regression was performed on the business data to test for equations that could predict the average number of deliveries per week. Regression on the movement-survey data was performed to test equations with the handling time of deliveries as the dependent variable. /Author/