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This chapter describes and discusses the main results of the successful off-hour delivery (OHD) pilot test in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, which took place between October 2014 and March 2015. The pilot engaged major stakeholders in urban distribution, including local authorities, shippers, carriers, and receivers, with the aim to determine what are the main requirements, constraints, opportunities, and threats for establishing a public policy related to shifting deliveries to late night in order to mitigate traffic congestion.

Differently from the former City of New York OHD pilot, here all participant companies were volunteers, with no need for cash incentives. The primary focus in São Paulo was on the issues of safety and noise, besides productivity aspects of travel time, truck speed, and delivery time.

The pilot was very successful, with no registered complaints of noise or security incidents. Travel speeds were obtained from global positioning system (GPS) tracking data and internal delivery systems. The chapter compares daytime and night operations and shows that productivity in some chains would improve significantly, but noise and safety must be carefully controlled to guarantee the expansion of the concept.

The purpose of the paper is to assess the roots of stockpiling behaviors and to give a quantitative assessment of shopping frequency changes for emergency supplies during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In addition, the authors aim to determine the sources that influenced emergency supply purchases during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The study used a polling or survey process implementation to collect the data on shopping patterns and to determine the drivers of stockpiling behaviors for the assessment. The polling was conducted using a snowball technique, and descriptive and regression analyses were used to define the roots of the stockpiling behaviors and the shopping frequency changes.

It was determined that 88.0% of end-consumers increased their shopping volumes for emergency supplies. An almost twofold increase in the average duration of usage for stockpiled goods (from 11 to 21 days) was also determined. Also revealed was a reduction in shopping frequency from an average of seven (pre-COVID-19 period) to five (first wave of COVID-19 pandemic) days. Such disproportional increases in purchase volumes along with a slight reduction in shopping frequency indicate the strong stockpile patterns that occurred during the pandemic.

The research is based on data from Ukraine, where the number of COVID-19 cases was low. Despite the comparatively low spread of COVID-19 in large cities in Ukraine in relation to other cities globally, people still revealed panic and stockpiling behaviors. The study's quantitative assessment of shopping behaviors reveals the social and economic determinants of the shopping frequency.

This article examines the extent of collaboration experienced by 191 Brazilian shippers, logistics service providers (LSPs) and carriers in their logistics operations in urban freight transport. This study investigates relationships over time, the type of service and the nuances associated with the frequency of meetings, frequency of technical visits and frequency of training.

The authors carried out a component analysis and, based on factor loadings, calculated indexes for use in non-linear canonical correlations to evaluate company-level differences in perceptions of the degree of collaboration and strength of relationship over time.

The results indicate that in the triad, LSPs are the strongest supporters of collaboration over time regardless of whether the logistics service is shared or dedicated; shippers demonstrate the weakest support for collaboration and prioritize relationships of one to three years in length. Carriers seek to develop short-term relationships and participate actively in meetings and technical visits because they strongly support strategic and interpersonal collaboration. Carriers also follow LSPs in terms of strategic and interpersonal collaboration and shared logistics services.

This article contributes to understanding the perceptions of interactions among specific logistics collaboration elements related to strategic, tactical and interpersonal relationships that the Brazilian companies face in their daily urban freight transport.