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Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

I've wondered if something like Hyperloop could make sense for high speed package transport, say between Fedex hubs. Smaller tubes, no need for life support, easier safety case, and packages could be designed to withstand higher accelerations (for sharper turns).

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Oh, yeah, scaled down this could totally work! What about for small packages and documents in office situations - pop a signed document into a tube and it could whoosh to the recipient. Or at banks, customers could put their deposits into a pod — from their car, maybe! — and get the money straight to the teller.

The future is here!

You are so on to something here....too bad VC money for such game-changing ideas is running dry these days...

Not sure if you're being sarcastic (the person you're replying to definitely is), but pneumatic tubes [0] have been around since the 19th century.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube

Yes they are being sarcastic.

Packages tend to be more patient than passengers. I'd expect that if someone builds a medium range (or long range) goods transport it will focus on cheap throughput, not on latency. Low latency at any cost use cases would remain the realm of couriers (and/or drones). Short range, things might look different. Urban-scale pneumatic pipe systems had been a thing before fax machines took over. But a last mile package delivery network would likely have more in common with an airport luggage conveyor graph than with hyperloop fantasies.

There is huge demand for hourly package delivery. I’d imagine Amazon would spend quite a bit on it like they tried to with drones. But as you said it’s more likely medium range stuff (warehouse->automated truck bays closer to customer or something). I’m sure they explored the idea, economics probably don’t make sense in most cases, anything to dude with municipal land dev alone would be a deterrent. Although there’s been plenty of obvious ideas that just took a bold person to try it and figure out the details.

It's true that Amazon built their empire on the strategy of considering fulfillment speed their primary distinction metric, but they are long past the point where cost could be ignored. Where I live (Germany), most web shops are at least on par with Amazon in terms of fulfillment, and that's before considering "Amazon, but without Prime subscription".

> There is huge demand for hourly package delivery

The market is huge, because what little demands there is, it's very inelastic. You either need super low latency delivery and are willing to pay almost any price (pizza gets cold, deliverator to the rescue!), or you don't. If someone could magically offer the service at lower cost they could own that market, but that market would hardly grow.

Hmm here in Southern Ontario Canada Amazon has 2 delivery blocks a day so I’ve gotten deliveries at either the morning or afternoon depending on when I’m ordering (I know both sets of drivers now as they work different shifts) and I’ve yet to find a retailer or system that’s as fast as Amazon. Canadapost is the only alternative and it’s never as reliable delivery wise. Shopify is the closest 2nd at being most consistently & honest in terms of data. If Amazon could go same day that would be a major innovation here and further eat into Walmart/Best Buy type retail, instant gratification being the only reason I use them.

I think that, in general, speed is much less important for the transport of goods. You care little if your purchase has to travel at snail speed for 24 hours straight, yet that would be unacceptable for yourself. Not to mention the fact that goods travel one way, humans generally travel both ways (so travel times also need to be multiplied by 2).

Something like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-U-Bahn_M%C3%BCnchen https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sihlpost#Post-U-Bahn

You’ve just reinvented pneumatic/vactrain freight transport, which has been knocking around as a concept since the mid-19th century.

In practice, it’s just really not competitive with conventional high speed rail or air freight.

Hyperloop is technically distinct from those. Indeed, the distinctions are what made it interesting.

"life support", you would still need pressurized pods. Most goods cannot survive being in a vacuum, heck guaranteed to cause fires in some cases when you cause lithium cell pouches to burst.

This was actually an article here earlier this week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38704725

There's already one in a university, Tom scott covered it in his video recently.

Are you thinking about pneumatic tubes? Or private underground rail?

I fail to see what the hyperloop nonsense brings to the equation.

As I understand it, the concept allows for smaller vehicles with frequent departures and arrivals. It makes some sense to send shipments of packages between delivery hubs often rather than waiting to fill a whole train enough to make it economical, while not being subject to a vehicle propelled by pressure in the tube.

I can't say whether it would be effective (or even beneficial enough to justify the construction cost) but it sounds more plausible than high speed mass transit for passengers.

Hyperloop is technically distinct from either of those.

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