Do Fedex And UPS Hold Off Delivering Things?

I ordered two things online, and both had free shipping IF you took the slowest delivery method. Since I’m in no hurry to get them, I decided to save myself the combined $30.00 and get it free.

One was sent FedEx and the other was sent UPS. I noticed the FedEx was sent and had an estimated shipping day of Monday March 30th. In one day it went from California to Chicago. And now has appeared to be sitting in Chicago. So it’ll be a total of six days if it’s delivered on Monday.

Now yesterday I ordered something via UPS and it says Friday April 4th. The tracking order indicates it went from Portland, OR to Chicago in one day. Now it appears to be in Chicago.

Now I’m not complaining but I’m curious. Do FedEx, UPS and others, just let the package sit and then not them out till the scheduled delivery day? I can see why they’d do this. If they were too fast no one would pay extra for the speedy delivery.

I could also understand it’d make it easier for them to schedule drivers. Make two trips instead of one. But like if my neighbor ordered something via FedEx and my package, which is sitting in Chicago (let’s say for argument sake they are at the same place), would they take both packages and save a trip?

So does anyone know how they do this?

IME, neither carrier has any trouble filling their trucks with items that HAVE to be delivered that day. So any package that doesn’t need to go on a truck for that day’s run will sit on the shelf until they are required to make room for it. And even if they were making another delivery to your house, say an overnight package, the GroundSaver package wouldn’t go on the truck until the scheduled delivery date. In rare instances where the delivery location was remote or spare capacity existed on the delivery truck, they MIGHT send a package out early.

I haven’t kept records, but I have grown to assume that 5 day ground shipping takes 3 days. I would be surprised if a ground package took the full time. And remember, the “free” delivery isn’t free to the shipper so UPS is making money every time. And there are costs to holding packages in terms of storage, scheduling, etc. I doubt they bother holding up the ground shipments.

My experience has been that sometimes the “slow delivery” package will arrive before the “due date”. I can only assume that if there’s room on the truck they’ll deliver it, but such things are the last items loaded until the must deliver date, and are only sent early if there’s room to ship them.

I’m having the exact same situation occur. The “delivery date” is March 31, but the package left Leeds, PA (its third stop) two days ago. Leeds is two hours from here. It has yet to arrive at the local Fed Ex facilty, nor to be delivered. so they are obviously holding it somewhere until the 31st.

Leetsdale, PA. Duh.

I’ve seen a package marked as “not due for delivery” on the FedEx tracking info. The package didn’t get on the delivery truck even though it arrived at the local office the night before. It’s very rare though.

My package arrived this afternoon, a full three days ahead of the estimated delivery, and on a Saturday, yet!..but even though it was shipped FedEx, it was delivered by USPS…so I guess they didn’t want to store it for a few days.

I sent an XBOX 360 to get repaired and according to UPS the repair center told them to hold it for an extra day. It was in the repair center town on Monday but didn’t get delivered until Tues because of that request.

Anecdotes don’t equal data.

I’m sorry I don’t have a cite for this, but as far as I know, UPS will deliver packages as soon as they can. Why? They want to get rid of them!

The longer a package stays in their system, the more it costs them, in terms of warehouse space, handling costs, and liability risk.

If they can reduce the amount of packages in their system by, say, 5% just by moving things along as expeditiously as possible, that’s 5% less warehouse space they need to pay for and maintain. With a system as big as UPS’s, that’s huge. And extra packages sitting in the warehouse cost extra man-hours. How can a package just sitting on a shelf cost time? Ever tried to find something in a crowded warehouse? Ever try to find a space to put something new in a crowded warehouse? It just plain takes less time and effort if the warehouse is a little less crowded. And it’s less likely you’ll damage something by shifting it around if you have a little more space. Which brings us to liability costs–the longer it’s in UPS’s possession, the more likely it is to get damaged.

So it’s entirely in UPS’s best interest to move things along and get them delivered as soon as they can. Since they are mainly using excess transport capacity, it costs them little or nothing extra to do this. It saves them money and it pleases the customer. There is no reason at all for them to routinely delay packages.

As for the argument that people won’t pay for the fast service because the regular service is too fast? Unlikely. It’s pretty hard for a business to go wrong underpromising and overdelivering. The amount of revenue lost by people choosing regular shipping because they think it will be fast enough will be more than offset by the people who choose UPS because they get their packages “early.” And that person who thinks regular shipping will be fast enough? Well, they’ll be trained out of it the first time something ends up arriving on the actual expected delivery date. Next time, they’ll cough up.

That is probably FedEx Smartpost http://fedex.com/us/smartpost/approach/process.html?link=4.

Essentially it’s a matter of waiting until they have enough packages going in the right general direction, then bundle them together and ship them out. Repeat until your package gets to the right city, at which point it’s handed to USPS for final delivery.

Moving from “California” to Chicago in a day meant it moved space-A on a plane. Chicago is a busy city for freight so it will likely be trucked from there to another sorting facility. The freight is already bundled with similar delivery dated freight and will get bumped if the lanes are full until the due date is the next day.

Business is way down for both Fed Ex and UPS so load utilization will be tightened which means low yield routes will be combined with other routes or eliminated.

Green Bean gave the main reason I believe the shippers don’t purposefully delay packages. Another reason is competition–if FedEx purposefully delayed packages but UPS didn’t, UPS would get more business. Packages will be delayed only if it’s more efficient for them to be delayed.

My WAG is that the low priority stuff is used to top off the truck after all the high -P stuff is added, as the truck should leave full. The estimate in time they give may be the time it should take to go through all the low -P stuff to deliver that package given normal flow of high -P.

I’ve never worked for FedEx or UPS, but my airline used to haul lots of freight of various catgories. It also sold various service levels ranging from it’ll get there eventually up to we’ll dispatch a plane right now just for your box. Prices varied accordingly.

The bottom line was freight was loaded in priority order, period. If we were a little low on high priority stuff that day/week, the low priority stuff might get there overnight.

If we were heavy on high priority stuff, there’d be an effort to increase capacity, but that only went so far; we couldn’t create airplanes & crews out of thin air every December to handle the XMas rush of *gotta be there by the 25th *freight.

Nothing ever sat any longer than was necessary. Because we were predominantly a passenger carrier, sometime freight sat so we wouldn’t bump people or their baggage. FedEx/UPS has no such concerns. They will get stuff where it’s going as fast as they can without impacting higher priority items.
Note they will be trying to dynamically size their operational capacity to the number of tons of demand they have. If they find low-priority stuff is getting from Seattle to Chicago overnight very often, that means it’s time to put a smaller, cheaper plane on that route. How quickly and efficiently they can do that has a big impact on their overall efficiency & profitability.

Same here they claim that they can’t deliver my package untill monday and it is only 5 min away from my house… I can’t even go an pick it up

A Romero DVD?

Since this was first posted some years ago, I’ve noticed I usually get my packages before the est day, but not amazingly so.

Pretty much I think that both UPS and Fedex dudes hide in the bushes until I leave, then sprint to the front door to leave a Notice instead of the actual package. :stuck_out_tongue:

So zombies work at Fedex and UPS? :stuck_out_tongue:

We recently bought a large item online. It sat at the local UPS warehouse for 3 days before it was delivered. Apparently the weight of the item prevented it from being put on the next truck like our usual deliveries.

Given its size and weight, it would have been a priority to get it out of the warehouse if that was the only issue. But not always.