the box Digitisation will not just transform how goods are moved around the world, but also how the world shops 数字化不仅会变革全球商品的流通手段，还会改变世界购物的方式THE Munich Maersk, which entered service in June 2017, is a testament to the technological marriage of information and transportation.于2017年6月开始服役的“慕尼黑马士基”号（Munich Mærsk）集装箱船是信息与运输实现技术联姻的见证 Its bridge looks like a very spacious cockpit. Packed with computer screens, it is all glass, no brass—with a wheel that looks more like a pilot’s control column. 她的舰桥看起来像一个非常宽敞的飞机驾驶舱，里面摆满了电脑屏幕，全部由玻璃制成，没有黄铜，而方向盘看起来更像是飞行员的操纵杆Sailing her 214,000 tonnes from port to port takes a crew of just 28. Loading and unloading the 20,000 containers she carries only needs the supervision of one crew member. 从一座港口到另一座港口，21.4万吨体量的她只需28名船员。装卸她运载的2万个集装箱只需要一名船员的监督The Munich Maersk, though, is a high-end exception—one of the best ships in the up-to-the-minute fleet of the biggest shipping company in the world. 不过，“慕尼黑马士基”号是一个高端的例外——它是世界上最大的航运公司拥有的最先进船队中最好的船之一。It shows what can be done. But at the moment the industry’s big issue is what is being left undone. 它展示了我们能够达到什么样的水准。但这个行业目前的大问题是还有哪些事情没有做Between 1985 and 2007 trade volumes rose at around twice the rate of global GDP. 从1985年到2007年，贸易额增速约为全球GDP增速的两倍In the 1990s the world’s largest container ships only had space for 5,000 or so containers; 90年代，世界上最大的集装箱船只能容纳约5,000个集装箱now it boasts giants like the Munich Maersk. 现在，行业里已经拥有了像“慕尼黑马士基”号这样的巨人The global logistics industry had revenues of $4.3trn (€3.3trn) in 2014, according BCG, a consultancy.根据咨询公司BCG的数据，2014年全球物流行业的营收达4.3万亿美元（3.3万亿欧元） But though the flows and the pipes have got bigger, the principles of the industry’s plumbing have changed little since they took their modern form in the 1950s and 1960s. 但是，尽管流量和“管道”都已变得更大，自该行业在上世纪五六十年代达到现代形式以来，这套“管路系统”的原理却没有多大变化Use containers of standard sizes that can be loaded onto trains, lorries or ships as needed; use scale to cut costs; co-ordinate the whole thing with a physical paper trail. 使用能够按需要装上火车、卡车或轮船的标准尺寸集装箱；利用规模削减成本；用一堆纸质文件来协调整个流程When in doubt, buy something bigger. The economic slowdown following the global financial crisis hit this way of doing things hard. 如果吃不准，买艘更大的船就对了。 全球金融危机之后经济放缓，让这种操作方式遭受巨大打击Although giants like Maersk continued to buy enormous ships, smaller lines with worse balance-sheets could not. 虽然像马士基这样的巨头继续购买庞大的船只，但资产负债状况较差的小型船队却难以为继Airbus, which had hoped to sell a freighter version of its A380 superjumbo, abandoned its plans. 本想销售A380巨型货机的空客公司放弃了这项计划Freight rates plunged as demand for shipping did not keep up with supply. Between 2012 and 2016, the Shanghai Containerised Freight Index, a measure of prices, fell by 73%. 航运需求增长赶不上供应增长导致运费暴跌。2012年至2016年间，衡量价格的上海集装箱运价指数下跌了73%，At the same time, the growth of e-commerce saw more aware, more dem
anding corporate customers insist on ever better handling of what is called logistics’“last mile”—moving purchases from their distribution warehouses to the people who bought them. 与此同时，电子商务的发展让更多更具革新意识、要求更高的企业客户开始强调要更好地处理所谓的物流“最后一公里”——把采购的产品从分销仓库送到买家手中Though today’s talk is all of delivery drones and driverless vans, the key to this transformation has been not new equipment but new ways of handling data: knowing where hundreds of millions of things are and where they are going, and being able to act on that data as things change.尽管如今的热门话题都是关于无人机和无人车送货，但这种转变的关键不是新设备，而是处理数据的新方法：知道上亿件物品都在什么地方，要往哪里去，还要能够在情况有变时根据这些数据做出调整 Now companies that have been crucial to these changes at one end of the distribution chain—Alibaba and JD, which are Chinese, and Amazon, which is American—are eyeing the rest of it. 现在，一些深刻影响了分销链其中一端变化的公司——中国的阿里巴巴和京东，以及美国的亚马逊————开始把目光投向这个链条的其余部分The business of moving goods internationally from factory to factory and warehouse to warehouse requires many more capabilities than shifting items from local warehouses to doorsteps. 将货物跨国从一家工厂运到另一家工厂，从一个仓库运到另一个仓库，这种业务所要求的能力要比把货物从本地仓库送到家门口高得多But it also accounts for 90% of the logistics’ industry’s global revenue. 但它占到了物流行业全球收入的90%How far the intruders can displace the incumbents and what new business models come out of the struggle will help determine how much world trade can grow and who the winners and losers from that growth will be.这些入侵者能够取代在位者多少，以及这场斗争中会出现什么样的新商业模式，将在一定程度上决定世界贸易能有多大增长，以及增长带来的赢家和输家分别是谁 Adrift in a sea of paper Firms looking to move components through their supply chain or finished goods to retailers have two main options. 在纸张的海洋中漂流 如果有公司要在供应链中运送零部件，或是把成品送到零售商处，它们的选择主要有两类Express-delivery services such as DHL Express (part of Deutsche Post DHL), FedEx and UPS are fast and flexible—all the more so now they have embraced new data-management systems. DHL快递（德国邮政DHL的子公司）、联邦快递和UPS等快递服务快速而灵活——如今它们采用了新的数据管理系统后就更是如此But they are also expensive—especially for long-distance air freight. Shipping a 70kg parcel from Shanghai to London with DHL Express takes three times longer, and costs four times as much, as buying a human of the same weight an airline ticket. 但它们也很贵，尤其是长途空运。用DHL快递把一个70公斤的包裹从上海送到伦敦，所花的时间相比给同样重量的人买一张飞机票要多三倍，价格则要翻两番The passenger gets a baggage allowance and free drinks, too. 话说旅客还可以免费携带一定重量的行李和享受免费饮料呢So most goods wend their way across the world using the second option—containerised freight. 所以，大多数商品都是利用第二种选择——集装箱货运——来缓缓横穿世界的The non-domestic cargo business has revenues of $2.6trn a year, according to BCG. And a lot of those revenues go to middlemen. 根据BCG的数据，非国内货运业务的营业额为每年2. 6万亿美元。这些收入中很多都给了中间商Dealing with customs clearances, insurance, transfers between sea and road and rail and all the other physical, procedural and bureaucratic hold-ups that freight is heir to requires the services of a freight forwarder. 要处理海关清关、保险、海上与公路和铁路之间的转运，以及货运中会遇到的所有其他实体的、程序的和官僚的阻碍，就需要货运代理人的服务These companies account for over a fifth of the logistics industry’s revenues (see chart 1); in some cases they receive as much as 45% of the total delivery cost. 这些公司的收入占整个物流业的五分之一以上（见图1），在某些情况下它们收取的费用占到了总运费的45%In 2016 Deutsche Post DHL’s in-house freight-forwarder made over $26bn in revenues.2016年，德国邮政DHL的内部货运代理公司收入超过260亿美元 Its smaller rivals Kuehne + Nagel, of Switzerland, and DB Schenker, of Germany, made $20bn and $17bn respectively. 在比它规模小一些的竞争对手中，瑞士德迅集团（Kuehne + Nagel）和德国的德铁信可铁路（DB Schenker）分别赚取了200亿美元和170亿美元For the most part, freight-forwarding companies charge a percentage of the total cost of the shipment; this gives them little incentive to drive costs down. 大多数情况下，货运代理公司会按照运货总成本的百分比收费，这导致它们没有什么动力来降低成本In a free and transparent market where all the shipping options were easily discoverable, this problem would be solved through competition. 如果有一个自由而透明的市场，让人们能够轻松发现所有的运输选择，那么这个问题就可以通过竞争来解决But the complicated world of shipping contracts is a long way from that ideal, and the incumbents have clear reasons for keeping it so. 但这个航运合同满天飞的复杂世界距离这样的理想还很遥远，而且既有企业有显而易见的理由来维持现状Zvi Schreiber, founder of Freightos, a website headquartered in Hong Kong that is introducing some transparency by allowing users to compare and book different options, says many firms may take two or three days to quote a price for taking an air-freight or a shipping container from A to B. 总部位于香港的Freightos网站的创始人茨维·施莱伯（Zvi Schreiber）表示，要提供把空运货盘或集装箱从甲地运到乙地的报价，许多公司可能要花费两三天的时间And forwarders are often unable or unwilling to say whether the goods will get from China to Europe in one month or two. 而且货运代理通常不能或不愿意担保说货物是否能在一两个月内从中国运到欧洲The industry’s backwardness can be seen in its thrall to paperwork. 这个行业的落后从其受制于纸面文书就可见一斑Systems based on e-tickets that say who is entitled to go where, and how, have been mandatory in air-passenger transport for ten years. 航空客运强制使用电子票已经有十年了，票上说明了谁有资格以什么方式去哪里But half of air cargo still travels with paper “bills of lading” rather than e-tickets. 但是航空货运中仍然有一半使用纸张提货单而不是电子票。In the world of containerised shipping things are even worse: freight forwarders deal with shipping firms, airlines and hauliers mainly by fax. 在集装箱运输部门，情况还要更糟：货运代理商主要是通过传真来和航运公司、航空公司以及陆路运输公司打交道The cargo on each voyage of the Munich Maersk generates a library of documents—many of which then need to be sent to the ship’s
destination by some other means. 慕尼黑马士基”号每次航行运载的货物都会生成一个文件库，其中许多文件需要通过其他方式发送到目的地That secondary shipping is not foolproof, either: vessels and aircraft are often delayed in port because the paperwork has not caught up with the goods that they carry.这项额外的运送同样并非万无一失——船舶和飞机经常在港口延误，因为其携带货物的文书还没有送到 The cost of all this is enormous. Removing administrative blockages and outdated practices would, by some accounts, do more to boost international trade than eliminating tariffs.所有这些问题的成本是巨大的。根据一些人的估算，去除行政障碍和过时做法对国际贸易的促进作用比取消关税还要大 The UN reckons that putting all the Asia-Pacific region’s trade-related paperwork online could slash the time it takes to export goods by up to 44%, cut the cost of doing so by up to 31%, and boost exports by as much as $257bn a year. 联合国认为，如果能将亚太地区所有与贸易有关的文书工作放到网上，出口商品所花费的时间可以缩短多达44%，成本可降低31%，同时推动出口每年增长2570亿美元The burden is felt throughout business. Two-thirds of the American importers who responded to a recent survey undertaken by Freightos said that over a quarter of their deliveries from abroad arrive late.这种负累整个行业都感受得到。在Freightos最近的一项调查中，回答问卷的美国进口商有三分之二表示，来自国外的产品有超过四分之一晚到 Some 42% said they spend more than two hours on paperwork to arrange a shipment. And 83% said they struggle to track items as they move across the world. 约42%的人表示安排一项发货需要在文书上花费两个多小时。83%的受访者表示他们很难追踪世界各地的在途货物That leaves many frustrated. “Amazon Prime can deliver to your house from its warehouse at a set time,” Mr Schreiber says. “Why can’t you do the same with air and sea freight?”这让许多人倍感挫败。施莱伯说：“亚马逊Prime可以在约定的时间里从仓库发货到家，为什么空运和海运就做不到呢？” One answer is regulation; there are a lot of institutional obstacles to reform. For instance, in 2008 a UN convention put electronic documents in international shipping on a firm legal footing. 一个答案是监管：改革面临很多体制性障碍。例如，2008年，联合国大会为国际航运的电子文件提供了坚实的法律基础But for these “Rotterdam rules” to come into force, the agreement must be ratified by 20 countries. 但是，要使这些“鹿特丹规则”生效，该协议必须得到20个国家的批准Owing to a lack of interest in the subject among politicians the tally so far is just four: Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Spain and Togo. 由于政客们对这个问题缺乏兴趣，迄今为止只有四个国家签署：喀麦隆、刚果布拉柴维尔、西班牙和多哥Poor communications used to be partly to blame, too, but that excuse has fallen overboard.通讯不佳一度也是原因，但如今这个借口已经不成立了 Inmarsat, a company originally set up by the International Maritime Organisation to provide satellite services for ships at sea, today offers data rates for ships that are over 100 times faster than they were 20 years ago. 国际海事卫星组织公司（Inmarsat）最初由国际海事组织设立，为海上船舶提供卫星服务它在今天提供的数据速率已经比20年前快了100倍以上。Various companies rushing to provide new mobile-broadband services will improve things further. 各种急于提供新型移动宽带服务的公司将会进一步改进现状Not just ships and planes, but the individual packages and containers within them, can increasingly be tracked in real time.不仅仅船和飞机越来越容易被实时跟踪，甚至它们内部的单个包裹和集装箱也一样 The Cincinnati kids Such data can help integrate the legs of a journey, for example by making sure that lorries do not wait for a ship that is behind schedule, or that they arrive early for one that’s ahead.辛辛那提小子 这些数据可以帮助把旅程中的各个航段整合起来，以确保货车无需苦等晚到的船，或者提前迎接那些早到的 They open the possibility of redirecting items along quicker or cheaper routes as they become available—if the shipper can find out about them.这就创造出一种可能性，即在更快或更便宜的路线出现时改变货物的运输路径——前提是发货人能够找出这些新路线 The hard-to-get information which lets people find spare shipping capacity will power the real revolution, according to Martin Stopford of Clarksons, a shipbroker. 这种难以获得的信息可以让人们找到闲置的运力，从而推动真正的革命，船舶经纪公司Clarksons的马丁·斯特福德（Martin Stopford）说Matching spare capacity to cargo in need of transport on the fly would allow the “Uberisation” of the freight business. 将闲置运力与需要运输的货物实时匹配起来，会带来货运业务的“优步化”There are already signs of this in haulage. America’s lorries travel empty more than a quarter of the time: the wasted capacity is equivalent to 200,000 lorries travelling 1,000km every day. 在陆路运输中已经有了这种迹象。美国的大货车有四分之一以上的时间都在空驶：浪费的运力相当于每天20万辆大货车行驶1,000公里This is because it is hard for forwarders to find return cargoes using phone or fax. 这是因为转运商很难通过电话或传真找到返程货车Now apps have appeared to match loads with drivers, just as the Uber app pairs passengers and drivers.现在，已经出现了将货物与司机匹配起来的应用，就像优步应用匹配乘客和司机那样 Indeed Uber Freight is one of the contenders.实际上，优步货运（Uber Freight）也是竞争者之一 Cargomatic, a startup based in Los Angeles, and Trucker Path, a rival in Texas that was bought by a Chinese firm in December, are competing with it for the freight business, while Amazon is testing “Amazon Flex” as a way of getting gig-economy drivers to make deliveries.总部位于洛杉矶的创业公司Cargomatic和得克萨斯州的竞争对手Trucker Path（去年12月被一家中国公司收购）正在与之争夺货运业务，而亚马逊正在测试“亚马逊Flex”来让打零工的司机送货 The vision of many in the industry is that such services will eventually cover all sorts of different transport modalities all over the world.行业内许多人的愿景是，这类服务最终将覆盖全世界所有不同的交通方式 In the past, realising the benefits of an integrated global network of ships, planes and lorries required owning such a network, a task too big for even the largest logistics firms.过去，要实现这样一个由船舶、飞机和货车构成的综合全球网络的好处，就需要拥有这整个网络，而这即使是对最大的物流公司来说也太过艰巨 Maersk, one of the world’s largest container-terminal firms as well as its largest containership operator, ran its sea- and road-logistics businesses almost entirely separately until 2016. 马士基是世界上最大的集装箱码头公司之一，也是最大的集装箱船运营商，直到2016年，它的海运和陆路物流业务仍几乎完全分开运营Most companies chose to specialise and hand co-ordination over to the forwarders. 大多数公司选择专攻一项，而将协调的工作交给货运代理Smartphones and sensors mean that, with the right platform or platforms, a freight forwarder, or a tech firm that had taken on such a role, could co-ordinate things much better than is possible today—and without any faxes. One of those seeking such changes is Amazon. 智能手机和传感器的出现意味着一旦有了一个或多个恰当运作的平台，货运代理公司或承担这一角色的技术公司的协调能力将比现在好得多，也再不需要用到传真了寻求这种变化的公司之一是亚马逊In 2017 it spent $25bn on logistics. It thinks it could get better value for money by expanding what it does itself from last-mile to all-the-miles. 2017年，它在物流上花费了250亿美元。它认为，把自己所做的“最后一英里”拓展到“所有英里”，将可以获得更好的投资回报It has created its own logistics division and acts as its own freight forwarder.它创建了自己的物流部门，充当自己的货运代理 Its cargo airline, Amazon Air, is still a tiddler compared with FedEx, with just 33 jets in its fleet.它的货运航空公司“亚马逊航空”（Amazon Air）与联邦快递相比还只是个业余玩家，其机队仅有33架飞机 But the cargo hub in Cincinnati on which the company is spending $1.5bn will have room for 100 jets. It has also been granted a licence to act as a maritime freight forwarder. 但公司投资15亿美元兴建的辛辛那提的货运枢纽将可容纳100架飞机。它还拿到了海运货运代理的许可Freight forwarders and transport giants alike claim that they do not see Amazon’s move into logistics as a threat. 货运代理和运输巨头们都声称自己并没有把亚马逊进军物流业看作威胁The explosion of e-commerce (see chart 2) allows DHL, FedEx and UPS to tell shareholders happy stories about their future. 电子商务的爆炸式增长（见图2）使DHL、联邦快递和UPS都能够给股东讲述关于自己未来发展的动人故事The demand for parcel delivery is growing by more than 7% a year, sufficient both to maintain jobs and survive competition, according to Frank Appel, the boss of Deutsche Post DHL. 根据德国邮政DHL的老板弗兰克·阿佩尔（Frank Appel）的说法，包裹递送的需求年增长超过7%，足以保住业内职位并让大家都在竞争中存活下来Automation may mean it will soon take a third fewer people to deliver a given volume of goods, he says—but the increase in demand will still make the industry a net job creator. 他表示，自动化可能意味着递送给定数量物品所需的人数将减少三分之一，但需求的增长仍将使该行业的工作岗位实现净增长And it will also mean that there will be room enough for both DHL and Amazon to grow. 而且这也意味着DHL和亚马逊都会有足够的发展空间。 如此这般乐观的另一个原因是，到目前为止亚马逊主要使用其网络来服务自己的客户Another reason for such optimism is that, so far, Amazon has mainly used its network to serve its own customers. But that will change. The companies with big e-commerce networks are keen to take on other firms’ logistics, too.但这一点是会变的。拥有大型电子商务网络的公司也热衷于承接其他公司的物流环节 The idea is not to own all the ships and rolling stock—though they may own some particularly profitable bits of the system—but to control the platforms that make services available, and to bring the rest of the industry on board by simply being too big to refuse. 其构想并不是要拥有所有的船舶和机动车——虽然它们可能拥有系统中一些利润尤其丰厚的部分——而是要控制提供服务的平台，然后简单地通过变成“大到无法拒绝”而把整个行业拉进来Perhaps the furthest down the road in this respect is Alibaba. Alibaba is a digital platform where buyers and sellers meet, rather than a retailer that holds inventory itself. 也许在这方面走得最远的是阿里巴巴。阿里巴巴是把买家和卖家带到一起的数字平台，而不是拥有库存的零售商It has thus always been focused on end-to-end logistics in a way that Amazon, which runs most of its business through warehouses to which goods are delivered by normal channels, is not. 因此，它始终专注于端到端的物流，这一点和亚马逊大为不同，因为后者的大部分业务运作时都是利用普通渠道把货物送到仓库Alibaba says that last year it was the middleman in $550bn of transactions within China, serving over 500m customers. 阿里巴巴说，去年它作为中介经手了中国境内5,500亿美元的交易，为超过5亿客户提供服务Through its logistics platform, Cainiao, it delivers 70% of all e-commerce parcels in China. Now Alibaba has its eyes set on international e-commerce. 通过其菜鸟物流平台，它完成了中国70%的电子商务包裹的递送。 如今阿里巴巴开始重视国际电子商务A study produced by Alibaba’s research arm and Accenture, a consultancy, in 2016 predicted that cross-border e-commerce shipments worldwide could rise from $400bn in that year to nearly $1trn by 2020. 其研究部门和咨询公司埃森哲在2016年联合进行的一项研究预测，全球跨境电商出货量可能会从当年的4,000亿美元增加到2020年的近1万亿美元Until recently, these international shipments tended to be restricted to fairly high-value goods.不久前，这些国际货运往往还只限于相当高价值的商品 But Alibaba now ships cheap, bulky things like nappies and milk powder from manufacturers in America to consumers in China. 但阿里巴巴现在正把像尿布和奶粉这样廉价而笨重的东西从美国制造商那里送到中国消费者的手中Last September the company said it was going to invest $15bn in boosting Cainiao’s cross-border capabilities. These developments should increase the total volume of goods shipped around the world yet further.去年9月，该公司表示将投资150亿美元用于提升菜鸟物流的跨境运送能力。 这些发展应该还会进一步提升全球货运总量 But Rob Wolleswinkel of BCG counsels against seeing this as a rising tide for all boats. 但BCG的罗布·沃尔斯温克尔（Rob Wolleswinkel）反对将这看作是鸡犬升天的机会Amazon’s logistics division, he suspects, will seek to “cherry pick” profitable undertakings such as managing the system, leaving only low-margin activities, such as basic transport services, to the likes of Maersk and DHL.他疑心亚马逊的物流部门会“精挑细选”最有利可图的业务，比如管理整个系统，而仅把基础运输服务等低利润业务留给马士基和DHL等公司 The newcomers, he notes, have two things on their side that previous would-be disrupters did not. One is that the company that owns the data owns the consumer. 他指出，亚马逊这样的行业新来者有两个特点是先前的挑战者所没有的。一是拥有数据的公司也拥有消费者Amazon knows a great deal about the people who use its platform, which is a lot of people; logistics firms know next to nothing about anyone. Second is the size of the tech giants. 亚马逊对使用其平台的庞大用户所知甚多，而物流公司几乎不了解任何人。其次是科技巨头的规模DHL,
FedEx and UPS have been big enough to bat away competition from startups. The e-commerce titans are another matter. 虽然此前DHL、联邦快递和UPS已经大到可以打败创业公司的竞争，但电子商务巨头是另一回事Some have woken up to the threat. Soren Skou, chief executive of Maersk, argues that it was a mistake for his firm to spend the past decade focusing so much on no-frills container freight between China and Europe. 有些人已经意识到了这种威胁。马士基的首席执行官索伦·斯库（Soren Skou）认为，他的公司在过去十年中太过专注于中国和欧洲之间的基础集装箱货运，实为错误决策That allowed freight forwarders to scoop out the profit that Amazon and Alibaba now covet.。这让货运代理商攫取了亚马逊和阿里巴巴现在觊觎的那块利润 Maersk must become more integrated to compete against Amazon, he says: he wants to make it “the DHL of the sea,” offering worldwide door-to-door delivery. 他表示，马士基必须进一步整合各项业务才能与亚马逊竞争，他希望把自己变成“海上的DHL”，提供遍及全球的门到门送货服务He plans to replace paper bills of lading with digital ones secured using blockchain technology. The firm is already rolling out a digital “Maersk Line Operating System” to put shipping data into a common format. 他计划使用由区块链技术支持的数字提单取代纸质提单。该公司已经推出了数字版的“马士基航运操作系统”，将航运数据转为通用格式This promises to be hugely influential. As an executive at a smaller rival admits: “We just watch what Maersk does and copy it.”这势必产生极大的影响力。一位较小竞争对手的高管承认：“我们无非是看马士基做什么，有样学样而已。” Et TEU, Brute In the past, the unreliability of container delivery has made it unsuitable for e-commerce; 集装箱也能变灵活 过去，集装箱送货因其不可靠性，不适用于电子商务that has been good for other retailers, who can turn a profit importing items from China in bulk to Europe and America and selling them on. 这对其他零售商来说是件好事，他们可以从中国大量进口到欧美出售以赚取利润If Maersk, or anyone else, can make containerised shipping truly responsive and flexible it will have implications well beyond logistics. 如果马士基或其他任何人能够使集装箱运输真正变得响应快速而灵活，那么它的影响力就远不止于物流了 It might seem fanciful to think of shipments on a behemoth like Munich Maersk being flexible in the way that vans tootling round suburbs with packages can be像“慕尼黑马士基”号这样的庞然大物，如果说它运起货来要能和在郊区穿梭送包裹的面包车一样灵活，似乎有点异想天开. But smart data management and good data analytics might get you a long way towards the goal. 但智能数据管理和良好的数据分析可能推动它向这个目标迈出一大步If you really know where all the goods are and have control over where they will go, you do not necessarily need to wait for an order before you ship something. 如果你确切知道所有商品的位置，并且能够控制它们要去的地方，那么就未必需要等到订单出现才能发货If you know roughly how many of the items in question the market is interested in, they can be shipped ahead of time, their e-ticket-like labels left deliberately vague. 如果你大概知道市场对商品有多少兴趣，你就可以提前发货，并把它们类似于电子票的标签故意留白When an order is actually placed, the relevant label will be updated with a precise destination in transit. 当实际订单到来时，相关标签将在途中被更新为精确的目的地 The ship takes on part of the job of the warehouse. Alibaba and Amazon are already pursuing this approach. 船承担了仓库的部分工作。阿里巴巴和亚马逊已经在追求这种方式To the extent that it can be made to work, such magic will eat into retail and wholesale margins—which for books and toys can be over 50% of the price.只要它能够发挥作用，这种魔法将蚕食零售和批发的利润——书籍和玩具的这部分利润可能超过价格的50%。 This is already happening to some extent. In 2012 Amazon began to allow Chinese businesses to start selling through its marketplace programme, which fulfils third-party orders; they now outnumber American firms.这在某种程度上已经发生了。2012年，亚马逊开始允许中国企业入驻其电商平台marketplace开展销售，如今它们的数量已经超过了美国公司 And Amazon has slashed the cost of delivering small items ordered from China to America. It is now lower than the cost of shipping within the United States (though delivery is slower). 亚马逊削减了把小商品从中国运到美国的成本，现在已经低于美国境内的运输成本（虽然送货较慢）Other American retailers, online and off, are angry at what they see as a subsidy to their competitors.其他美国零售商，无论线上线下，都对这种在他们看来是对竞争对手的补贴感到愤怒 Some estimate that as many as 7.5m retail jobs will disappear in America over the next decade, in part because of the increased possibilities for e-commerce that better logistics will bring.有人估计，未来十年，美国将有多达750万个零售业职位消失，部分原因是物流的改善为电子商务带来了新的可能性 Others are more optimistic. Michael Mandel of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC, has pointed out that in America jobs in logistics are increasing faster than retail employment is falling. 其他人则更乐观。华盛顿智库“进步政策研究所”（Progressive Policy Institute）的迈克尔·曼德尔（Michael Mandel）指出，在美国，物流业职位的增加快过零售业职位的减少Those new workers, though, are unlikely to be employed by old firms. As Mr Stopford notes, incumbents did badly last time technological change swept logistics. 然而，这些新员工不太可能是被老公司聘用的。正如斯特福德指出的那样，技术变革上次横扫物流业时，既有企业表现得很糟糕“Who today has heard of Blue Funnel Line?” he asks of the British firm which was one of the largest cargo lines in the world—before containers and Maersk came along.“今天还有谁听说过蓝烟通（Blue Funnel Line）？”他口中的这家英国公司曾经是世界上最大的货运航线之一——在集装箱和马士基出现之前。
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