My company is currently working on integrating a recently acquired smaller company as a new division. We are on the mainland; the small firm is based on Maui. They’re telling us we can’t Fedex anything to them overnight, and that the fastest we can send them anything (physically) is two-day shipping. This is creating some operational and logistical hassles on both sides.
Assuming they aren’t yanking our chains (we’ve found the islanders’ sense of humor to be a little odd), why would this be the case? Does Fedex just have really slow planes? Or is the volume so low that Fedex (et al.) doesn’t bother scheduling flights except every other day? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be more accurate to describe the shipping as overnight half the time?
A quick Google search of “Maui +overnight delivery” turns up scads of pages (mostly florists) who promise overnight delivery to the mainland. Fed Ex is the only service I saw mentioned by name, but there may be others.
I dunno. I FedEx overnight to the Big Island all the time and it’s virtually unpopulated. AND I’m a couple thousand miles farther from it than you are. One thing I haven’t tried is morning delivery. Could that be your problem?
I suspect it’s because they can’t guarantee next day delivery - they’d rather have 99% on a two-day service than advertising next-day and only acheiving 90% success.
The keyword here is FLORISTS. Most florists can deliver anywhere the next day because they have an affiliate florist (FTD, 1-800-flowers, etc.) near the recipient. They don’t actually send flowers, they hand off the order and take a small cut. The flowers are in Maui (or wherever) to begin with.
Have you checked into UPS. They have a service called Sonic Air. It’s really friggen expensive, but you can get something pretty much anywhere in the world in 24 hours.
If you ever try to overnight anything to parts of the U.S. deep in the Rocky Mountains or Great Plains, you’ll find that the overnight delivery companies often don’t go there, period. Instead, they overnight the package to the nearest city (say, Spokane, WA) and then hand it over to the much maligned USPS for final delivery.
Of course, the USPS won’t guarantee overnight delivery to those places, either.
Yes, FedEx can overnight your package to Maui. There are 3 main delivery companies within FedEx; “FedEx Ground” (for deliveries to businesses), “FedEx Home Delivery” (for deliveries to residences) and “FedEx Express” (for overnight and some two-day to both businesses and residential). Most companies deal everyday with their “regular” Ground driver, and may have mistakenly thought that Express was not available. It is.
Fun fact; much of the USPS overnight mail rides on our airplanes, not the other way around. If a USPS employee is handing you a legitimate FedEx package with barcode, strange things are afoot.
They can send to you overnight, you get it in the afternoon.
But sending mail to Maui: all mail goes to Honolulu overnight and is sent Maui the next morning.
These florist are shipping leas and flowers indiginous to Hawaii. I wouldn’t think your local florist is gonna have these in stock. If you order roses form a Maui florist shipped to the mainland FTD is the answer. Leas and rare tropical lilies are another thing altogether.
IOW, I don’t think your local florist gets lea’d very often.
We ship a lot of things (big boxes of cables, gauges, meters, etc) from Technical Thingies here on the eastern coast of Virginia to Honolulu. The best we can do is the UPS next day air. Leaves here Tuesday at 3 p.m., gets there sometime late Thursday morning. It’s something our customers realize, and live with.
People on Maui have no problem overnight things ***from *** Maui. It’s just that there is no overnight ***to *** Maui. This is true of all parts of Hawaii except for Oahu.
My brother, who lives on the island of Hawaii, says all packages are routed through Honolulu. Partly, to save costs, the volume of extraneous mail does not warrant its own flight. There aren’t as many flights as before. Partly, for security reasons: e.g. pakalolo, etc.
If time is of the essence, and money is not an object, consider an airlines small package dispatch.
For approx one zillion dollars, you can get a package from you to Maui the same day. (I shipped a CD from SF to Portland for only $75 dollars! :eek: )
Contact one of the major airlines that serve both Seattle and Maui.
Or is the volume so low that Fedex (et al.) doesn’t bother scheduling flights except every other day? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be more accurate to describe the shipping as overnight half the time?