The Mobile Depot: a logistic facilitation in the Turin City Centre

The Mobile Depot (MD) was piloted in the city of Turin to decrease the number of last-mile deliveries and ease traffic congestion in the city centre. The MD is an evolution of the single truck trailer that contains parcels, envelopes and cargo bikes themselves. The aim is to operate the last-mile delivery operations from a single “facility”, from which goods are picked up and delivered by the fleet cargo-bikes provided by the MD itself and the already operating ones, throughout the city centre, and capable of aggregating the ecosystem of stakeholders and managing distribution processes from production to delivery in real time. In the pilot, the role of the municipality was to provide the authorisations for the road deployment. The MD is, in fact, parked and acts as an outpost for the bikes dedicated to deliveries and pick-ups. It is manned during the day and will return to the TNT depot in the evening together with the goods collected and the bikes themselves. The trailer, indeed, once parked, is transformed by automated mobile appendages into a real operations centre, 14 metres long and 6.5 metres wide, equipped with reception, offices, warehouse, security cage and toilets. It should be emphasised that the solution proposed by TNT was not designed as a hub for several logistics’ operators, but as a single TNT facility. Furthermore, it was not a B2C solution, not even for private entities. The benefit related to citizens is the reduction of congestion in the city centre.