A subsidiary of Sacramento smart locker company Luxer One is beta testing its Harbor public locker systems in Sacramento and Chico.
The public lockers are operated by a smartphone app and allow for delivery, storage and pickup of items around the clock, seven days a week in public places.
“Harbor is a hardware-as-a-service product that provides the lockers access,” said Van Tucker, general manager of Future Lockers, another Luxer One company, via email.
Luxer One makes high-tech parcel acceptance lockers for package deliveries at apartment buildings, large corporate campuses and retailers. Those lockers are generally used in private places, like inside stores and buildings. By contrast, Harbor Lockers are public, placed outdoors all over town.
Harbor Lockers can be used for last-mile delivery, outbound shipping, returns and storage, said James Mitchell, a marketing officer with Harbor.
Harbor has placed eight lockers in Chico, and it's deploying about 200 of them in Sacramento for use by potential customers.
Potential uses can include package pickup, food pickup, product giveaways, event bag storage, peer-to-peer exchange and other uses. Harbor is inviting companies to build their own business models using the infrastructure of the Harbor public locker network, Mitchell said.
Luxer One knows lockers. It's deployed 8,500 of its lockers over the past 15 years, and those locations have had more than 200 million deliveries, according to the company’s website.
The Harbor public lockers are completely operated over smartphone or tablet apps.
That is different from Luxer One’s smart lockers, which can feature an embedded digital tablet screen where delivery workers input a code on a touch screen on the lockers in the lobby of an apartment complex, for example. The delivery person picks the resident and the size of locker needed on the tablet. A camera takes a picture of the parcel label, and when the carrier puts the package into the locker and closes the door, Luxer One sends a notification to the customer.
For the Harbor beta test, the cost is variable, but a per-usage fee starts at about 50 cents, Tucker said.
Luxer One was founded in 2014 in San Francisco. It moved to Sacramento in 2016, with its current headquarters located off Power Inn Road near Fruitridge Road.
Giant Swedish lock company Assa Abloy Group acquired Luxer One at the end of 2018. Based in Stockholm, Assa Abloy is the world’s largest lock manufacturer. It provides technology associated with “door opening solutions” for residential, institutional, hotel and electromechanical functions. The Assa Abloy family of brands includes August, Yale, HID, Medeco, Emtek and Adams Rite.
