Big box boom, but drivers needed

A MASSIVE E-COMMERCE SHIFT HAS LED TO A MAD DASH FOR INDUSTRIAL SPACE AND DELIVERY DRIVERS

- ABRAHAM JEWETT

People simply aren’t going shopping anymore. The COVID-19 health crisis has forced businesses to reevaluate how to get products to consumers, who either don’t feel comfortable going to the store or just don’t want to deal with the hassle of going to buy something they can get delivered.

This explosion in e-commerce, the buying or selling of good’s online, has been perpetuated by the global health crisis and has left businesses scrambling to keep up with an increased demand for shippable merchandise.

One major beneficiary of the collective shift to purchasing online is big-box warehouse distribution centers, which have been constructed at a rapid pace all around the country in order to keep up with the growing demand for products to be delivered directly to doorsteps.

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Global commercial real estate company Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. (JLL) reported a record 97.4 million square feet of new industrial space was constructed by the end of the third quarter of 2020 alone, with that number expected to reach 107 million once end of the year numbers are officially tallied.

“We have seen a speed associated with innovation that was never known to us before COVID,” said Matt Powers, executive vice president at JLL, in an interview with Logistics Management. “Supply chain models are being transformed in days instead of months or years.”

The demand to buy goods online has been dramatic, with online spending reaching an estimated $209.5 billion in the third quarter of 2020, an increase of nearly 37% from the same period a year before.