Wow, a zombie joke. Tres clever…:rolleyes:
I used to work in shipping. UPS will hold onto a package and not deliver it till the date it is supposed to be delivered. Fed Ex will deliver it early if they have it locally. At least that is their policy.
20 year veteran here of one of the big courier companies. You will forgive me if I won’t say which one. I started out in 1989 as a part-time driver and worked my way up to regional operations manager. I decided a few years back that I had given enough of my life to the courier industry and retired. I realize that this is an old thread, but I wasn’t around when it was started.
In answer to the OP, sometime yes and sometimes no. As a general rule, if an early package was going to an address, or near an address, where the driver was going to be delivering to anyway, the early package would be delivered. If the driver did not have any packages that were going nearby, it would be held.
It was the drivers decision (for the most part). When I was a driver, I would deliver any package that arrived early if it was at all possible. It was a very rare occurrence for me to hold something for the next day. My reasoning was that you never knew what would happen tomorrow and it was better to start each day “clean”. There may be a late truck, or you might be overloaded. At the other extreme, some drivers would almost never take out a package that wasn’t due to be delivered that day. Most drivers were somewhere between those two extremes.
There were also remote delivery areas that we would only deliver to every other day. For example, there were places in the Western United States where one driver would cover two counties, both remote and thinly populated. The driver would take out all the packages for county A and leave behind all packages for county B. Then do the exact opposite the next day.
Most of the time packages would arrive at the destination station on the same day they were due for delivery. The exceptions were mainly packages that came from an origin that was within the same regional hub. All packages going from, for example, Houston to Dallas, or New York to Philadelphia, would be trucked overnight regardless of service level. 2 day packages would make the trip right alongside the overnight shipments. The other exception would be mis-sorts. If the origin station mistakenly put a 3 day shipment in the overnight container, it would arrive at its destination 2 days early.
I thought NoClueBoy’s was cleverer. 
This is a 2009 thread and the OP is banned, so at the very least it’s a zombie thread. :eek:
I can’t speak for FedEx but here’s how UPS rolls:
For ground shipments specifically, in Chicago, your package would likely enter the sort facility in Hodgkins IL where it shows up on one truck and gets loaded onto a high-speed conveyor system with hydraulic flappers that knock the box onto the (usually) correct truck.
UPS is proud of the fact that this process takes anywhere from** 5 to 11 minutes** to get off of one truck and onto any one of dozens of waiting trucks backed up to the sort facility. Some of the trucks are headed for other hubs and sort facilities and some of the trucks will go to the local office for pickup and delivery.
The only consideration that’s really given is when they’re being unloaded from trucks, and they’re sorted out as “small sort” (envelopes and things that would fit into a mailbox basically), medium sort, and bulk (large or over 90 pounds.)
Small sort items get plucked off of a conveyor and sorted through, then they get aggregated into larger bags, tagged, and delivered to a common destination that way – its too easy to lose an individual item otherwise.
Medium sort items get put, label up (facing any which way), onto a slow moving conveyor that unloads onto a series of progressively faster moving conveyors until it makes its way through the sort facility and onto a big oval-shaped central conveyor that travels around a garage bay with trucks backed up to it.
Packages travel through a huge barcode scanner that aims every which possible way, it measures about 4’x4’, and hydraulic arms knock packages off of the central conveyor and down a chute to the (again, usually) correct outbound truck.
Meanwhile, oversized and overweight packages travel on a separate conveyor thats very slow, very wide, and very low to the ground. They don’t want heavy things falling on people, and while those hydraulic arms pack a punch – you dont want to get hit by one – it’s only reliable up to a certain size and weight.
Occasionally boxes get busted up there. Very rarely, things come flying off of the conveyor and fall to the ground. The most memorable one was a full box of loose nuts and bolts that had only been wrapped in a clear garbage bag. When the hydraulic arm spanked that thing, nuts and bolts rained everywhere and it damaged one of the conveyors.
Again they’re very proud of the fact that this thing takes 5-11 minutes to get inside of that enormous facility and back onto a truck. There’s no incentive to stall the process, its designed for get-in-and-get-OUT with no capacity whatsoever for intentionally retaining items.
As for the earlier comment about the bushes… I laughed. UPS does not make money sending a truck to your house three times, there is no conspiracy there, but that comes down to bad drivers, some are absolutely lazy and shady. After that sort of thing became a pattern, I pointed a motion-activated webcam at the courtyard and caught my driver slapping a notice and darting back on his truck as fast as his legs would go. I called the depot and raised holy heck over that, and what do you know, UPS suddenly became reliable again.
There are also bad apples in the sort facilities – despite employees being scanned, searched, and going through a metal detector in and out, things somehow still get stolen. It’s amazing. But that’s all the more reason that idle packages sitting around are a liability. They don’t want your phone or laptop or whatever sitting on a shelf unguarded for two days.
^^ or your big box of loosely packed nuts and bolts. sorry, couldn’t help myself.
I ordered some bubble wrap for my business and the company shipped last Tuesday it via UPS Ground from Lenexa, KS to me. The tracking number shows original delivery estimated delivery on Friday, UPS’ standard transit time for that zone combo. Almost immediately upon tracking showing up, it then showed estimated delivery on Thursday, a day early. Seeing the local hub it went through shows me it was put on an airplane, hence the 2 day service.
So, not only will UPS deliver a day early (they don’t like to hold onto packages at the local hub if they don’t have to), they will put ground packages on an airplane if the network can accommodate it. Rare that it happens, but still, it’ll happen from time to time.
As an old UPS driver once explained to me… you don’t pay for the name of the service, you pay for the timeframe of delivery. How UPS or FedEx or whomever get it there is up to them.
Do I understand the first paragraph correctly - a bunch of bolts in a garbage bag, or was there actually some kind of other packaging involved? :eek:
As for the 5-11 minutes estimate - how long do some of those trucks stay parked in the yard before/after the transfer? 
(Full disclosure: My husband is a USPS letter carrier in the Chicago suburbs, but has full respect for UPS/FedEx workers. And honestly, the vast majority of packages seem to come through just fine.)
Yeah, I knew that. I was showing my appreciation for NoClueBoy’s Romero reference in post #17. As in George Romero, director of “Night of the Living Dead.”
Fedex sucks don’t you remember they throw boxes over the fence! Also I ordered a pa large on may 22. Went out may 22 and it is now the 29 I’m still waiting. It went from Orlando to cocoa at 5:12pm today may 29.2013. Its like why stop.a city over bring me my package. I hope next.time someonei yes me ups!
I never saw the movie Twilight or read any of the books, but I recall that they were about vampires and werewolves. Were there ZOMBIES in those books?
Not the same I know, but I worked in the UK for a large haulage company that shifts pallets all over the UK. They offer two levels of service, ‘A’ = next day, and ‘B’ = 3 days. (longer for islands).
The system works by shipping all the pallets collected during the day, up to a central hub, and then using the same trucks to take the pallets for local distribution back from the hub in the morning. A single depot may send from two to ten trucks (15’6" double deckers mostly) every night.
‘B’ service pallets are loaded last, both at the original depot and again at the hub, although the hub aims to be as empty as possible by mid morning every day. It is up to the receiving depot to ensure that all pallets are delivered by the time they are due. Bearing in mind that many ‘A’ pallets are time sensitive and some ‘B’ pallets will have become ‘A’ by the time they arrive, this take some good organisation. The objective is to deliver as much as possible each day and to fulfill ALL delivery requirements even if extra transport has to be hired in. Depots are fined for non compliance.
We were asked many times whether we deliberately delayed ‘B’ pallets and I could always answer, truthfully, no. On the other hand, if I were a shipper, I would not use the ‘A’ service unless time was really of the essence. The fact was that most of those were delivered either the next day or the day after.
There were in the fifth book, “Waiting Impatiently”
When i was in shipping UPS’ policy was to deliver it as soon as possible regardless of the given delivery date. Fed Ex on the other hand had a policy of waiting until the delivery date to deliver.
Zombification noted, but I think this is an interesting topic, especially with regard to UPS and FedEx having different policies:
UPS is mainly a truck based service. They will project an arrival date, but basically don’t promise. If you want a promise, it costs you, and you have a wing (heh!) of the company that is an air freight service. that runs llike the FedEx model
If UPS ground gets it there sooner than projection, it is good customer relations, and to hold packages would require warehouse space, and more importantly extra labor and logistics to keep track of them and when to deliver them.
FedEx (air, not ground) is a intended as premium priced overnight shipping service. In order to offer this, they have to run a plane in and out of Memphis on every spoke, every day. They fine tune their pricing so that the price is worth it to people who really need overnight delivery. But at these prices, the airplanes are mostly not filled. Lowering prices on overnight packages would result in more packages, but maybe not more profit. Offering afternoon delivery, and two-day delivery options results in full airplanes without diluting the profit on the urgent packages. But if they went ahead and delivered them, then customers would stop paying the overnight rate, so they have to hold them to avert this. The extra time probably does give them some options not to run extra aircraft on occasion. Selling the same product “de-tuned” for several price points has been done by microprocessor makers and outboard boat motors, so it wouldn’t be unique to the parcel market.
FedEx ground is a trucking service like UPS, and delivers early when possible, IME. I think FedEx bought into this to compete with UPS so that UPS couldn’t use it’s ground service to subsidize it’s overnight air service which would cut into FedEx’s real niche.
I thought it amusing how UPS employee say it’s always UPS’s policy to deliver as soon as possible (while FedEx would hold the package), while FedEx employees state the opposite (that it’s UPS that would hold the package!). 
Both Fedex Ground and UPS Ground guarantee the delivery dates for their normal ground service packages, except during the 10 days before Christmas. They will refund your shipping charges if they fail to deliver on time, but only if you file a refund claim (they will not notify you). There are many companies out there that will audit UPS and FedEx shipments for large shippers and make their refund claims. There is no extra charge for the guarantee.
In the early days of FedEx Express, they used to ship every package through Memphis, even if you were shipping across the street. Their network is more sophisticated now. Although Memphis is still their largest hub, they have many more hubs both in the US and abroad.
Whereas FedEx Express and FedEx Ground are operated as if they were two independent companies, UPS Air and Ground operations are much more integrated. They won’t necessarily fly a package anywhere if they can get it there by truck. Just coincidentally, I tracked a 2nd Day Air package that was sent last Thursday from Ontario CA and guaranteed for delivery in Chicago on Tuesday. Since Monday was a holiday, they had five days to deliver. The package took a scenic road trip along I-80. This is not the first time I have seen this happen, it is quite common.
As far as holding packages goes, my observation was that UPS was far more likely to delay a package until the scheduled delivery date than FedEx Ground was. But something changed about a year ago. Both seem to be quite willing to get them there early without hesitation.
One or other of your posts contains reliable information, I’m sure. But which?
UPS has a substantial truck hub system. They are capable of delivering next day service by truck in many places. It becomes a marketing problem if you’re delivering multi-day service the next day.
I will say that UPS didn’t have the best of tracking systems years ago. It’s improved greatly. I would hazard a guess that they didn’t have the capacity to recognize marketing over-deliveries back then. I would be surprised if they still deliver freight ahead of schedule.
Ground shipping never moves on weekends. Wherever it is at 5 pm Friday, that’s exactly where it will be at 8 am Monday. Five days means “five business days”.