Estimate the Truck Fleet for a Grocery Service With a 24-Hour Delivery Promise

Your company runs a grocery delivery service that promises to deliver each order within 24 hours of when it is placed. Estimate how many trucks you need to run it. Lay out how you structure the estimate, label each assumption, and finish with a number and a sense of how confident you are in it. ```hint Size one truck's day Work out what one truck can deliver in a day, separately from demand: how long a route takes, how many stops and orders fit in it, and how many routes a truck can run. Then think about which day of the week you are sizing for. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - What area does the service cover, and how large is it? - How established is the service there, and how much of the local grocery demand does it capture? - Do orders need to stay refrigerated, and must someone be home to receive them? - Do trucks load at one central warehouse or at several local hubs? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A defined service area, customer base and delivery conditions, settled before the arithmetic - A demand chain from population to orders per day, sized for the days the fleet must actually cover - One truck's daily capacity built from route time, stops and vehicle space, and how the 24-hour window affects it - An allowance for spare vehicles, with arithmetic that is correct and unit-consistent - A sanity check from a second angle, a final range, and the inputs that move the answer most ### Follow-up Questions - How would the fleet change if the promise tightened to delivery within two hours? - Would you own the trucks, lease them or contract with carriers, and how would that change the number you own? - After launch, which input would you measure first to correct the estimate, and how?