In July, the sun in Panzhihua makes the mango leaves on the mountains shimmer. In the village courtyards, farmers inspect the Kate mangoes wrapped in protective bags daily, picking a few early-ripening fruits and packing them neatly into cardboard boxes, waiting for the delivery truck that arrives at 3 p.m. These fresh mangoes, just off the branches, quickly catch a ride out of the village, reaching the county transfer station the same day, and are dispatched to logistics hubs in Chengdu and Kunming by the next morning, heading to destinations across the country.
This seemingly ordinary upstream journey was something local producers "dared not even dream of" just six months ago. Getting high-quality fruit out of the mountains has never been just about growing it well. The logistics bottleneck of the "first mile" was once an insurmountable barrier for countless fruit sellers. However, since PDD Holdings Inc launched the "free village delivery" pilot service in Panzhihua at the end of 2025, couriers not only deliver parcels to villages but also carefully collect upstream packages on their return trips. This has turned the "last mile" of industrial goods entering villages into the "first mile" of agricultural products reaching cities. Specialty agricultural goods, once unable to escape the mountains due to small order volumes and high costs, now leave the mountains with ease, with significantly reduced logistics costs and transportation losses.
As the harvest season approaches, this postal route reaching the village entrance has given many small and medium-sized merchants the confidence to welcome the peak season—small orders are no longer "awkward," and logistics are no longer a bottleneck. The sweetness of the deep mountains is no longer trapped by the winding mountain roads.
Small orders trapped in the mountains
From downtown Panzhihua to Yang Yueqing's village, the drive takes about an hour. Over 90% of the route is winding mountain roads, with cliffs on one side and abysses on the other, dense curves, and narrow lanes. The village is deep in the mountains; when the sky dims, fog rolls in, reducing visibility, making even experienced drivers tremble. After traversing this mountain road, one is likely to encounter Yang Yueqing, who frequently inspects the mangoes in the village. He grows dozens of acres of mangoes, has run a physical fruit store, and was one of the first in the village to go online—trying private-domain sales, but volumes never took off.
In 2017, hearing that PDD Holdings Inc valued agriculture, Yang Yueqing plunged in, learning operations from scratch. With no experience and unfamiliar with the rules, he paid his "tuition fees." People advised him to stick with his physical store for a stable life, but he refused to give up: Panzhihua has the "best" sunlight and soil, and the fruits grown here should have no reason not to sell. After a decade of persistence, he now manages four stores, selling his own fruits and purchasing from other farmers, ensuring a year-round supply with daily sales of nearly 2,000 orders.
"The longer I'm in this business, the more I understand: the real challenge of fresh food e-commerce isn't the chaos of a sudden surge in orders, but the awkward position of having orders that are neither here nor there," Yang explains. During product testing, pre-sales, or off-peak periods, a store might have only a dozen or dozens of orders a day. "But without these small orders paving the way, there would be no explosive sales when the fruit is in season. And it's precisely these small quantities that make every step of getting out of the mountains a gamble on cost and risk."
Previously, Yang would use his electric scooter to haul fruits to a collection point in town for shipping. Hiring a courier to pick up in the village was either expensive and uneconomical or cheap but unreliable in delivery time, with the bumpy roads causing damage to the fruits at his own expense. He still remembers an order from years ago: a box of mangoes shipped from Panzhihua to Guangyuan, a distance of over 700 kilometers, took 15 days to arrive. After repeated calls to the courier, the package was finally found in a corner of a collection point, but the buyer had already requested a refund. "Losing money is one thing, but losing store ratings and customer trust is the real damage."
Beyond delivery times, costs were also a concern for Yang: express shipping cost 12 yuan per kilogram within the province and 18 yuan outside, while regular shipping cost 5-6 yuan per kilogram. Hiring a small truck to transport goods to the city warehouse, a round trip of over 100 kilometers, cost 200-300 yuan just for transport at 2.5 yuan per kilometer. "The profit from dozens of kilograms of fruit isn't enough to cover the shipping cost out of the mountains."
These "first-mile" troubles are hard for those who haven't worked in production areas to understand. Having 12 years of experience in the courier industry, Yang understands the pain points of rural logistics: it's not that there are no roads, but the "capillaries" haven't reached the "fields and farmyards." When order volumes fail to achieve economies of scale, small orders are easily trapped by costs. "In e-commerce in production areas, having more product categories gives you more resilience against risks." But what frustrates Yang is that exploring new production areas and new product categories often gets stuck at the step of "too few orders to afford shipping." "If the fruits can't get out, new businesses don't even get a chance to enter the game."
Village delivery activates market access
At the end of 2025, when PDD Holdings Inc launched the "free village delivery" service pilot in Panzhihua, Yang Yueqing was among the first to change his delivery address to the village. This initiative was originally part of the platform's efforts to accelerate the delivery of quality supplies to villages and promote consumer inclusivity. Since the fourth quarter of last year, PDD Holdings Inc has been building an end-to-end delivery network, including county-level transfer stations and village collection points, across multiple provinces and cities. The platform fully covers the second-stage transfer costs for village deliveries, aiming to address the issue of high logistics costs in remote administrative villages.
But with his years of courier experience, Yang keenly realized that this not only opens a channel for parcels entering villages but also has a positive impact on agricultural products going upstream from remote areas. As the "free village delivery" service becomes more normalized, Yang now only needs to send packaging boxes to farmers' homes in advance. After picking and sorting, farmers pack the fruits on-site. Couriers, while delivering parcels to the village daily, pick up the upstream packages and bring them directly to the transfer station in Panzhihua, from where they are dispatched to logistics hubs in Chengdu and Kunming the next morning.
"I've calculated this: it's both faster and more cost-effective," Yang says with a smile. He can even give the courier a small tip, which is more than half the cost of hiring a truck to pick up goods in the village. "The cost of entering the village is subsidized by the platform. For outgoing shipments, because we have a large annual order volume, a package of 3-5 kilograms now costs just a few yuan to send to most parts of the country."
More importantly, damage rates and labor costs have also decreased. Fresh food is sensitive to repeated handling. Previously, from the village to the warehouse, goods were unloaded and reloaded, leading to bumpy transport and bruised fruits that had to be sold at a discount. Now, after farmers pack the boxes, they are directly loaded onto the courier truck. "Multiple handlings" have become "direct original box shipment," significantly reducing damage rates. Moreover, without the daily hassle of dealing with pickups and shipments, Yang can use the saved time and energy to explore new production areas and focus on quality control.
The most attractive aspect of this new model is that it solves the Achilles' heel of "small order volumes." Recently, Yang has been testing the market acceptance of a purple cabbage in his store, with just over a dozen orders per day. In the past, he would either have to endure high costs until volumes increased or simply cut the product category. Now, there are no such concerns.
In recent years, the central government's No. 1 document has continuously emphasized advancing express delivery to villages, supporting the co-construction and sharing of rural logistics facilities, and promoting the integrated development of rural passenger, freight, and postal services. The "15th Five-Year Plan for Accelerating Agricultural and Rural Modernization" also mentions taking multiple measures to expand rural consumption. This includes improving the rural commercial logistics system and promoting cooperation between production and operation entities and e-commerce platforms, supermarkets, restaurants, and supply and marketing markets to precisely align production, supply, and sales.
One farmer told Yang that the small delivery truck now arrives promptly every day, picking up the fruits they picked in the morning and the sealed boxes from noon, and loading them for the return trip in the afternoon. With less handling, the fruits are fresher when they reach city dwellers. "This small change means I no longer have to struggle to get to a collection point or anywhere else. I can send out the fruits right at my doorstep. It's so much more convenient."
"Doing business is about two things: calculating costs and paving the way. Costs must be calculated precisely, down to three decimal places, to control expenses. The road must be paved far, covering supply chains, logistics, and channels. If any part is missing, the business can't go far," Yang feels. The "free village delivery" policy has helped him pave the road connecting the fields and the transfer station, "allowing small and medium-sized merchants to balance cost and efficiency for stable operations—service levels remain high, ratings stay stable, and when the peak season comes, they can build a single product into a bestseller."
Currently, Yang's business is gradually expanding beyond Panzhihua: from January to April, he focuses on local tomatoes and loquats; in May, he adds new corn products recently developed in Yunnan; from June onwards, Kate mangoes are available from early summer to late autumn; and in August, pomegranates are added, ensuring year-round business. The sun in Panzhihua is strong enough to grow the sweetest mangoes, and the express delivery route reaching the village ensures that this sweetness is no longer trapped in the mountains or forced to take detours, reaching dining tables thousands of miles away faster and more reliably.
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