Pipes. A simpler, more lag friendly hopper

Imagine a hopper without the ability to pick up items and is only able to transport them. Make it out of copper to give it a use, give it a single stack to reduce lag and backlogging and to balance it and like the hopper, have it only transport items horizontally and down. I'm imagining you would still need a hopper to pick items out of containers to then put them in pipes. Even if they aren't made of copper, but just iron, that would still be amazing. This would solve many issues. Lag apparent on pro servers, giving another use for copper which it desperately needs, reducing backlogging and potentially making transporting items cheaper.