Originally Posted by
Roody
If I'm not mistaken, the service sector has long been the fastest growing employment sector. A lot of those jobs are unsuitable for home employment. In fact, quite the opposite. More and More services are being delivered in the client's home rather than the traditional location. This varies from home health care to physician house calls to home delivery of restaurant meals, hair cuts, and other personal services.
The client or patient gets to stay at home, saving time, fuel and money. The service provider must travel to many homes, at greater expenditure of time, fuel and money. (Often, the provider's real office is their car.) Does anybody know if these home services provide a net savings in gas, time, and money--or a net increase?
It's going to be highly variable depending on the service types and volumes. If a lot of people use the same grocery service, and the delivery guy can drop off several household's loads on the same loop, it's less driving than each family driving on their own to the supermarket and back. On the other hand, if some clients accomplished several errands on one trip to the mall or mainstreet: see the manicurist, get a haircut and pick up pizza, that's less driving than having that all come to their home separately. So we may not even be able to answer the question until we study it after it happens.
My guess is that if the service providers can schedule it optimally, like one of my those old child's puzzles where you draw a line from the number 1 to 2 to 3 and so on and it turns out to be the outline of a dinosaur, that would be less driving than all those people making a round trip to see them.