Ok, I sent a package, at parcel rate, from Southern California to El Paso, Texas with delivery confirmation. So, I can track it online. I check it and it’s in Dallas, several hundred miles east! .:eek: I assume it was flown there. Yet, there’s a freeway, Interstate 10, that connects Southern California to El Paso. Wouldn’t have it been more efficient to have trucked it there?
Apparently not or they probably would have done it that way. Large scale logistics simply doesn’t work that way. It probably went to Dallas because it is a major city and an efficient distribution hub. Overall efficiency and not point-to-point transit via the shortest geographical distance is the goal. Loads of mail and packages are consolidated in bulk at certain sites in the places that are most efficient for the carrier. If you send anything to anyone via FedEx for example, the chances are great that the package is going to go to Memphis, TN and back out even if the sender and recipient are only 20 miles apart because that is where FedEx is headquartered and does their sorting.
Right. Almost exactly what I was starting to write.
The OP is describing inconvenience, not inefficiency. It would be more convenient for mailers and recipients in SoCal and El Paso to have a dedicated truck between them, but it’s more efficient on the grand scale to have all Texas-destined mail transported to a central hub, in this case Dallas, then redistributed regionally. The truck to El Paso probably makes drops all along I-20 from Dallas to El Paso and back.
FedEx has various sorting centers now so not everything goes to Memphis.
Talk about a question that answers itself!
nm
Of course, the Post Office is pretty inefficient. But that’s more a staffing issue.
That’s true now, but not all that long ago, 100% of FedEx packages went through Memphis. Even if you were overnighting a contract to another business in the same building, it went to Memphis for the simple reason that to FedEx, it was more efficient to just throw everything to one very large sort facility and not spend any time looking at what they were moving around. They’re not in the business of looking at every package they touch to see if it would make “sense” to keep it locally rather than sending it cross-country - they’re in the business of getting every package to its intended destination on time. Running every package through the exact same process is part of how they do that.
As for the OP’s package going further east than expected, you probably do the same thing every time you fly somewhere. It’s more efficient for the airlines to operate a “hub” system where flights connect at an airport more or less in the middle of the jorney, than it is to maintain a multitude of direct flights from every airport they server to every airport they serve.
Once again to the OP’s package - yes, it’s entirely possible that their Parcel Post package was flown to Texas. The US Post Office has a partnership with FedEx, and it’s back to that efficiency thing. This time, the efficiency is in flying full airplanes. Whether they’re jammed full of packages or there’s one lonely little box, FedEx planes make their trips every day. If there’s empty space, they take on some mail. It can be almost random what mail gets the FedEx treatment - accoding to a friend who was a supervisor at a FedEx facility, it was often just a matter of what was near the airplane at departure time.
heh-heh…
“OP’s package”
heh-heh-heh.
I would say it’s not efficent to do it that way, but that’s the way it’s done and no one wants to look into it.
But this isn’t so unusual. How many of our jobs do we do and not do it efficently. I’ve administered time and motion studies and I found few people really do their jobs effieciently. It just seems worse because this case is obvious.
And you never know why things are really done. For instance, in the past six months I’ve had three packages, all valued at over $100, that have not been delivered to me. I know they are stolen. The driver (USPS and UPS are the carriers) just leave the packages and I know someone in the building just takes it.
My question is why not require a signature? I don’t know why? But as soon as I called the store in all three cases they apologized, credited my account right then and there, and offered to reship. So this must happen a lot, 'cause it didn’t even phase them.
There are lots of reasons when you study efficency that seem odd to people. And you can’t tell untill you examine all the reason.
I’ve been working at a factory for a temp job for three weeks past. More often than not, I find when I stand on the line, I have to use my left hand to do most of the work. Odd as most people are right handed, and if I could use my right hand, I’d be much quicker.
Still the lines in the factory aren’t made that way? Kind of odd, but who knows why? Perhaps the cost of installation outweighed the minimum wage line operators
Here’s another way to look at it. Your mail likely doesn’t go directly from the Post Office to your door, unless you’re the carrier’s first delivery of the day. It’s driven all over town while he delivers other parts of the route and may have gone for a five mile ride before it gets to you.
Overall it’s more efficient to do it that way, rather than having the carrier make hundreds of trips between the office and each address.
This.
A distribution hub only “looks” inefficient if you think the only two places that exist are the place its going from and the place its going to.
The US Post Office may not be a model of efficiency (is any massive organization?) but I do suspect they have done a half decent business analysis of how to deliver mail.
Personally, I have always been amazed that they can do what they do at the prices they charge.
I believe all delivery companies charge extra for signature confirmation. It’s extra work for the delivery person to ring the doorbell and ask for a signature. Also they often need to make multiple delivery attempts until someone’s there to sign for the package.
Mail-order companies may find it cheaper to lose the occasional package (and have to send replacements) rather than pay extra for signature confirmation on every package they send out. Especially if they sell inexpensive products.
Got a cite for that? They are losing money, but that is to be expected considering the dropoff in profitable first class mail and political pressure to keep money losing post offices open.
That’s certainly true, but that’s sorta my point. It’s not run by a business and isn’t very money-efficient. They have to operate everywhere, and thus keep open many places they don’t need. I’m not saying that any given location is overstaffed, but that the organization as a whole has unprofitable branches. Whether this is worthwhile is another issue. Now, *salaries *I could argue with.
The sender determines whether a signature is required. And, yes, it costs extra.
And there have always been exceptions.
I was flummoxed a few years ago when I ordered some furniture from a large company, it was flat-packed stuff and scheduled to be delivered via Fed-Ex. I got a tracking number and a notice that my package had shipped.
However, my efforts to track the package were futile. It showed no record of shipment the first day. It showed no record of shipment the second day. Not the third. The stuff came to my door the 4th day and I was totally taken by suprise.
It turns out that this company ships LOTS of stuff via Fed-Ex. So much, in fact, that Fed-Ex would come to their factory with a truck, fill it up with packages destined for New York City and drive them straight there…without even scanning the boxes at all until they hit NYC when they were taken back out and delivered the same day.
Go figure.
All of these inefficiencies that you see are just opportunities for you to make millions of dollars. If you can really come up with a better way to do things then all of these companies, than you can outcompete them and take over the industry, instead of working as a temp at a factory.
So you think it’s more efficient to have the drivers’ require signatures? I’d say exactly the opposite. Waiting around for signatures would add at least a minute to every delivery, maybe more. They are purposely doing the more efficient process, knowing that over all, it is cheaper to just re-ship what is lost/stolen. If you want to make things more efficient you should notify the police that someone is stealing your packages.
I forget the name of the comedian who defended the U.S. Postal Service, saying, “Walk up to anybody in Times Square and say, ‘Take this letter to Los Angeles for me, would you? Oh, and here’s 44 cents for the job.’”