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Online ordering seems so easy—and in recent years, so essential: you tap a few buttons, type in a few words, and food or a new gadget arrives at your door. But the story behind that journey is a bit rougher than you might imagine.Circuit Route Planner (an app for delivery drivers) surveyed more than 500 delivery drivers about their job, and found that most of them judge us on what we buy, most have been accused of stealing packages, and 80 percent say they’ve eaten some of the food they’re delivering.Results regarding peeing in bottles (or around a customer’s house) and casual hookups were all higher than most people likely expect.Surveys regarding the delivery industry are usually focused on asking consumers if they’re happy with their free shipping options. But the other side of the industry gets less attention: the drivers and couriers who actually do the work of bringing online shoppers their goods.

Maybe you’ve thought about what your cardboard-box bringers experience during their days, but unlikely as detailed as what Circuit Route Planner found. The delivery-driver-focused app recently asked over 500 delivery drivers what they like and don’t like about their jobs. Most (69 percent) of the respondents were food delivery drivers, while the rest (31 percent) were other kinds of couriers. While Circuit Route Planner admits that there are serious limitations to using this kind of survey data—among them, “telescoping, exaggeration, and selective memory”—the results still offer up a few important lessons. Like, for example, the fact that you shouldn’t tip-bait.If you don’t know what tip baiting is, good on ya. This is the bait-and-switch practice of changing, or even eliminating, tips after the food or product is delivered. In 2020, a group of U.S. senators asked the FTC to investigate the practice at Instacart and other shopping delivery services. The senators wrote that the people doing the work “choose which orders to take based on the expected compensation, which is largely driven by the estimated tip. By permitting customers to ‘bait’ shoppers with high tips that are then revoked, online delivery services facilitate the deception.”

Circuit Route Planner

It’s not clear how widespread the problem is. While absolutely frustrating for delivery drivers, there are good reasons for shoppers to be able to change their tip after delivery, and more often than not, the adjustments are positive. Instacart told Today that “virtually all” of the grocery delivery tips that get changed after delivery actually increase the amount. Instacart also said it deletes accounts that frequently tip-bait.38% Have Crashed, 80% Have Eaten Some of Your FoodWhile tip baiting was one of the main problems delivery drivers have with their customers, it wasn’t the only one that makes a lot of sense. Like the fact that 78 percent of delivery drivers say they judge people based on what kinds of packages they order, or the 69 percent who said they’ve been accused of stealing packages. Thirty-eight percent said they’ve been in some sort of car accident while delivering goods. That’s a lot, but not as crazy as the 36 percent who said they’d been robbed while working.Some responses sure make being a delivery driver sound like you’re actually in a certain kind of movie. A full 25 percent of drivers admitted to hooking up with someone while on the job. And then there’s the off-putting reality that 10 percent of respondents said they urinated in bottles during the work day, and 9 percent said they’ve urinated on or around recipients’ homes. Perhaps the grossest is the nearly 80 percent of food delivery drivers who revealed that they’ve eaten some of the food they’re delivering.
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Comments from Ford CEO Jim Farley on Thursday seemed to indicate that the company was going to transition to 100 percent online, fixed-price sales for its EV offerings to stay competitive with modern retail expectations. A Ford spokesperson clarified those comments on Friday, which he says were taken out of context.Rather than a complete transition to a new distribution model, Ford spokesperson Said Deep told Road & Track, Ford is simply discussing developing a 100 percent digital online transaction platform, not transitioning 100 percent of sales to a digital platform. In Farley’s initial comments reported Thursday, he compared the sales strategy to the way some retail companies have adjusted to digital competitors.”I believe for retail, we have to . . . It’s kind of like what happened between Amazon and Target. Target could have gone away, but they didn’t,” Farley says. “They bolted on an e-commerce platform and then they use their physical store to add groceries, and make returns much easier than Amazon. They use their expertise as a physical retailer to their advantage, but they modernize the e-commerce piece, so it would be really easy to do business with them. It’s exactly what we have to do on the retail side. We’ve got to go to non-negotiated price, we’ve got to go to 100 percent online. The vehicle, there’s no inventory, goes directly to the customer, 100 percent remote pickup and delivery. But then we have this opportunity to use our physical presence to outperform them.”When asked if the change would mean transitioning away from a dealer model to focus on direct-to-consumer sales, Deep reaffirmed that the Ford dealer network remains a crucial element of the company’s future.”Leaning into” Dealer Network”Our dealers are a competitive advantage for us as they are closely connected with their customers and communities they serve,” says Deep. “This is the reason we are leaning into them and working with them to dramatically improve our overall customer experience for EVs. We want them to be even more specialized in the future, and we plan to craft a new set of operating standards for Ford EV sales that would combine the ease and most popular aspects of direct-sale startups with the expertise our dealers have developed over more than a century. Ford and our dealers want to deliver the best experience we can for our customers. The digital retailing experience is critical. Whether the customer is at home or in a dealer showroom, they expect an outstanding digital experience. Our ability, together with our dealers, to deliver a 100 percent digitally supported, world-class customer experience is going to serve our customers very well no matter how they want to do business with us.” The quote indicates that the existing dealer model will be integrated with something that resembles the direct sale model for the consumer, including direct delivery. It does not necessarily mean that dealers would not have stock on hand, though.”Directly to the customer is about sourcing just in time—built to order for an individual customer and delivered through our dealer network,” Deep says. “If they want it delivered directly to their home, our dealers can help do that as well. We’ve had great success with this already on Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning. This is just one way we are looking at reducing the amount of stock a dealer needs to hold, reducing costs for both Ford and our dealers that we can reinvest in more compelling products and services for our customers.”

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• This splendid Agave Green 1973 BMW 2002tii is currently up for auction on the Bring a Trailer website.• This is the car that really made BMW in the United States, and it brings back fond memories, since I owned one in high school in the 1980s.• Bidding on the 2002 is currently at $17,000, with five days to go until the June 8 auction end date.The BMW 2002 sport coupe, particularly the fuel-injected version designated by the tii suffix, was the car that gave BMW its foothold in the United States, providing the foundational bona fides for the brand’s eventual Ultimate Driving Machine tagline. We choose this gorgeous ’73 tii as our pick of the day from Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of the Hearst Autos group. The car has a 2.0-liter inline-four with a five-speed manual transmission and features 13-inch wheels, front disc brakes, front bucket seats, and a sunroof. It has been repainted in its original color, Agave Green.

But my reasons for selecting this car go well beyond those details and the model’s key position in the Bavarian Motor Works canon. When I was just a young car fanatic, in high school in suburban Detroit in the 1980s, I bought a 1973 BMW 2002 as my first real vehicle. It was more than a bit ratty, with rusty fenders, rockers, and hood. It had 120,000 miles on it, though the 2.0-liter engine and four-speed manual transmission had both been rebuilt at around 75K, and it sported Bilstein shocks, an Ansa exhaust, a Weber carb, and Pirelli tires. The tan vinyl on the passenger seat was torn, and much of the stuffing had fallen away, exposing the internal springs.

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I worked every weekend, about 25 hours a week, at a pizzeria and then a lovely local Italian restaurant to keep my Bimmer running, and it ate up every cent I earned. Eventually, however, I saved up enough to have all the rusty bits replaced with clean new sheetmetal, and the car repainted in a non-factory blue that was closer to the azure in the BMW roundel.

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The summer after my senior year, within weeks of getting the car back from the shop, I was on my way to visit some old folks I’d met at a local home for senior citizens, as part of a community service program I’d helped found at my school. While stopped at a red light, some coked out a-hole rear ended me, spinning my beloved 02 into the intersection in a spray of gas, metal, and round taillight plastic lenses. The car was totaled. I was unhurt, physically. I was emotionally devastated. I loved that car. It taught me how to drive.

Bring a Trailer

I’ve always wanted another 2002 but never pursued it, falling instead into a million other forms of weird car love. When I returned to my high school for my 25th reunion a decade ago, BMW was kind enough to loan me a perfect tii, in the same shade as my dearly departed 02, and I had a reverie. But since I own a green 1990 Range Rover and a green 1979 Fiat 124 Spider, were I to buy again, this one seems like an ideal choice.

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