The Efficiency of UPS
A package on its way to Lynchburg, VA…
01/25/2007 20:01 US Billing Information Received
01/25/2007 15:30 Baldwin Park, CA Origin Scan
01/25/2007 21:14 Baldwin Park, CA Arrival Scan
01/25/2007 21:15 Baldwin Park, CA Departure Scan
01/25/2007 22:23 Ontario, CA Arrival Scan
01/26/2007 00:19 Ontario, CA Location Scan
01/26/2007 05:45 Ontario, CA Departure Scan
01/26/2007 12:36 Louisville, KY Arrival Scan
01/26/2007 14:02 Louisville, KY Unload Scan
01/26/2007 14:15 Louisville, KY Location Scan
01/26/2007 15:54 Louisville, KY Departure Scan
01/26/2007 17:57 Jamaica, NY Arrival Scan
01/26/2007 20:35 Jamaica, NY Departure Scan
01/26/2007 22:56 Newark, NJ Arrival Scan
01/27/2007 07:45 Newark, NJ Departure Scan
01/27/2007 10:00 Philadelphia, PA Arrival Scan
01/27/2007 20:25 Philadelphia, PA Location Scan
01/27/2007 23:14 Philadelphia, PA Departure Scan
01/28/2007 10:55 Louisville, KY Arrival Scan
I’ll keep you informed of any more super logical excursions.
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7 comments
Richard– that’s not the half of it. In December I ordered some shoes from a mail-order only place called New Balance Web Express. The thing is, New Balance Web Express is located here in St. Louis– I’ve actually been to their offices to make an exchange before. Since they are mail-order only, they had to ship to me, and they did it by UPS. So the package left their facility, went to the St. Louis sorting station, then down to Louisville, then back up to the exact same sorting station here in St. Louis, then to my house.
If only someone had just looked at the address and walked it a few loading docks down, it would have arrived two days earlier!
That’s hilarious!
Sorry about your package being delayed, though.
Richard: Try being a Mac user living in Anchorage [the primary incoming point for Apple stuff from China], then watching the package go to the Lower 48 and then back. There’s this one Mac-happy blogger in Anchorage that posts about it every time…
Like most express services, UPS operates out of “hubs.” In most cases it is more efficient for them to route things through these hubs than directly from depot to depot, even if the depots are relatively close to each other.
Of course as with any automated system, that can lead to sometimes ridiculous anomalies as those related above. UPS depot managers are supposed to catch those, but they don’t always. One told me sometimes it gets so crazy it’s easier to just let the package go on to the hub, and that doing so doesn’t necessarily delay it by very much.
Don’t try to speak reason to me, Mark.
Actually… my package arrived this morning, a day ahead of schedule. I guess I can’t complain about their wacky way of doing thins. But I can laugh at it, right?
Oh you can laugh! I track UPS packages every day in my job, and I still crack up when I see some of these routings.
Yeah, at my job (in a suburb of southwest Houston: Stafford), we ship to a couple of companies in Houston, but within about 5 miles of us. The packages often will go all the way to IAH and come back (from what our pickup driver told us when we asked about the 2 day shipping time for a 5-8 miles distance).
So yeah, it’s crazy.
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