There's two things the article doesn't consider enough which might be important:<p>1. Road access<p>2. Crime<p>The first is a lesser concern but does affect deliveries. An area with easy access to highways and truck-worthy roads is easier to do economical deliveries in. Some areas have roads that can't take trucks due to clearance, quality of road itself, weight limits on wooden bridges, stupid GPS routes, and so on. Fixing that stuff up helps.<p>The second, crime, is a major concern. This article starts being less shocking when you replace "mostly black or latino" with "high chance of being robbed, raped, or murdered." I cant speak to all their examples but many jump right out. The blacks I know from Chicago say the South-side is "the hood all over it." All of them have said that. Then the Bronx shows up of course. Also parts of Atlanta where crime is highest and a few thugs I had the displeasure of meeting. Kicked their ass back to Georgia. All areas where a company vehicle and/or driver is likely to get robbed with the driver maybe being straight-up <i>murdered</i>. And for almost no money since it's low-income areas.<p><i>That</i> might factor into their analysis. Wisely so as almost nobody in the murder capital I live in wants to deliver to the hood even though plenty do (eg Dominos pizza or Jimmy Johns) because they need a job. A number of those report the occasional gun to their head to get a free product with manager blacklisting that house. Stories like that go around business to business, driver to driver. A truck stolen for $80,000 losses does too. Compare it to the white neighborhoods where people just don't get robbed at gunpoint delivering a pizza. Rarely if ever.<p>It's perfectly reasonable to refuse to deliver to high-crime areas until they get their shit under control. Neighborhoods need to start standing up for their own and ejecting people like that. Enough of that happening will let the companies differentiate more between safe and unsafe neighborhoods that are low-income. Then, companies might come back to them. Meanwhile, companies reduce their losses greatly by not showing up.<p>Note: I've turned down multiple, high-paying jobs because I'd have to waste too much money on security or insurance. Because they were in the hood. And, yes, there's articles about those same locations just like this talking about how avoidance happens because they're black or Latino. No, it's because we'd rather not die, buy another smartphone, or go to the DMV again cuz assholes take the license. Stuff that doesn't happen in poor, mostly-white parts of my area. They just steal gas, burglarize empty houses, sell weed/meth, and so on. Stuff that won't kill me outside the occasional thug solo or pair. 2nd Amendment works fine for that as it's not 15-20 person gang all at once like in the hoods.