Omniva chief wants to use postal trucks' idle time for food and goods deliveries

To ensure Omniva's postal trucks run on electricity only in the future, the amount of time they are sat idle needs to be reduced. One way to do this would be a move to delivering food and other goods in bulk, said Omniva CEO Mart Mägi.
Omniva has set the target of halving its carbon footprint by 2030. That means, in six years' time Omniva's fleet of 1,117 postal trucks, which cover more than 30 million kilometers a year across the three Baltic countries, should be mostly powered by electricity according to a report by Estonian daily Postimees.
Omniva chief Mart Mägi, sees the main challenge emanating from the fact that the company's postal vans are accustomed to driving around six to eight hours a day, while being left idle the rest of the time. He says, a way has to be found to make better use of this resource by increasing the useful working time of Omniva's postal van fleet.
This summer, former police chief Elmar Vaher was brought in to examine potential ways to extend the service life of Omniva's postal trucks. According to Mägi, Vaher and his team have now reached the conclusion that the trucks could provide courier services during the hours they are not being used to deliver the mail.
"We are thinking seriously about giving postal trucks an extra shift, figuratively speaking, by making them into (courier services) Wolt and Bolt," Mägi said.
He added that Omniva's representatives have already met with major retailers, and are currently finalizing agreements as well as working on a data exchange platform in order to go ahead with pilot projects to this effect in spring.
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Editor: Michael Cole