I used to live in an apartment that still had its little milk delivery compartment built into the wall. There was a door inside and a door outside-- the milkman would leave the milk bottles inside the compartment from their side, and the resident would leave the empties for collection from their side.
I remember watching movies from the 30’s and the 40’s that would have department store delivery vans delivering clothes and other items to residents. The item would be purchased-- but rather than carrying it home, it would be delivered by the delivery guy.
I remember hearing commercials even in the 80’s about phoning in your order to the grocery stores. My mom and others of her generation never opted for that-- she was the kind of person who wanted to select her own produce-- but I know senior citizens liked it for things that you didn’t have to be particular about (boxed goods, cleaning supplies, etc).
I know urban people who are busy with long commutes and don’t feel like fighting city traffic will use Amazon Prime for their daily grocery shopping.
I live in a rural area. I’ll occasionally order something specialized online-- a certain brand of tea that I usually have to make a 2-hr round trip to get. Or a certain kind of fabric or trim for a project that I’d have to drive hundreds of miles to find in a bricks-and-mortar store-- and even then, it’s not guaranteed. Or maybe I want ankle boots, and it’s the wrong month to find them in the store, or they’re not even in style this season. Or maybe I want a particular book that hasn’t been in print in decades, and there’s no way to find whether or not any particular used bookstore in a 100-mile radius happens to have a copy.
So, yeah. I definitely understand the uptick in package deliveries. Deliveries have always happened, but it’s so much easier to get niche-y stuff rather than pawing through stuff randomly and trying to find something kinda sorta like what you want… and so few places are doing their own deliveries these days.