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Which Shipping Company Is Kindest To Your Packages?
Ant writes "Popular Mechanics mailed a bunch of sensors on an epic journey to find out which American shipping company is the most careful with your packages. From the article: 'One disheartening result was that our package received more abuse when marked "Fragile" or "This Side Up." The carriers flipped the package more, and it registered above-average acceleration spikes during trips for which we requested careful treatment.' Here's what they found."
The test is interesting but in my opinion the data set is too small to draw any real conclusions. It would be nice to see this test done at least a few times per mail carrier.
they wouldn't be working there long. Also, it makes me wonder why you have reprobates as friends.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
As long as you don't need low latency the sneakernet has and probably for the foreseeable future will beat the snot out of wires in terms of bandwidth. Even by train it takes me 2 days to get say halfway across the country. For approximately 1880 miles or so. 6Tb over 2 days would be round about 38gbps, if I got the figures correct. That would be like 3 2Tb drives, and not even going as quickly as one could got. Driving makes it even faster, and if you're in for a plane ride it gets pretty ridiculously fast.
I currently work for a Canadian shipping company that handles UPS, Purolator, DHL and a bit of FedEx air freight across the country and I can tell you at 4 AM outside in the cold and rain after the 4000th 50lb supposedly fragile package it's REALLY hard to give a flying(get it? 'cause it's air freight) fuck about your shipment. And of course as they say in the article, express shipping (read: air freight) is expensive, to keep a reasonable profit margin sacrifices have to be made and so that although 1 in 1000 might get damaged the other 999 make it to their destination on time and in one piece.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Not exactly.
What they are is generally is people who are paid badly and whose only required qualification is the ability to lift a certain weight. Which translates to "muscular 18-25 year old males with no education". Think of any 18-25 year old males you know or to what you were like back then if you were. Personally I was a dickhead, and your average UPS employee is probably worse.
I knew a guy who used to work in one of those places and he said that they used to have competitions as to who could break more fragile packages. They're bored, they're stupid, and they're not looking for a lot of career advancement.
is it quicker to walk to the end of the truck with a baseball sized package or to toss it in the air and hit a line drive with a cardboard tube bat to a waiting coworker?
I actually don't mind this at all.. but I wish shipping companies did a better job of handling the aftermath.
I can accept that in order for me to have a package sent from somewhere in the bowels of the USA to my door step here in Canada within 2 days for under $50 .. some corners need to be trimmed. Trying to deal with UPS over the phone however is way too painful, and DHL is (in my experience) akin to eating a lightbulb.
It always worried me that the name of the company was pronounced "Oops!" That's kind of a giveaway, isn't it?
No left turn unstoned.
"I can tell you at 4 AM outside in the cold and rain after the 4000th 50lb supposedly fragile package it's REALLY hard to give a flying(get it? 'cause it's air freight) fuck about your shipment."
Boy, aren't you glad that pilots don't stop giving a flying fuck about your ass after 10 hours of flying? Or that the doctor doesn't stop giving a flying fuck about you after you've been bleeding for 10 minutes and (s)he's all messy? Or that after a long double-shift the guy building your car and assembling the brakes doesn't stop giving a fuck after a long 12 hour shift?
Fucking pussy. Suck it up. And stop breaking my expensive shit.
I get that. I do. People package stuff wrong -- under-packaged, over-packaged, or just stupidly packaged. If I want it to get there safely, I shouldn't count on "fragile", I should package properly.
What I don't get is why you'd warn against labeling that way, or why you'd treat a potentially-poorly-packaged "fragile" package worse than a normal one, other than bitterness.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Agreed. If your package isn't packed well enough to withstand at least a 3ft drop onto concrete, and at least 20kg of pressure without breaking, you're doing it wrong. Obvious carelessness aside, there is NO carrier that will gently carry your package around wearing kid gloves, before putting it on the passenger seat of their van/truck with the seatbelt around it. All packages get tossed into that backs of trucks where they rattle around with 5 other packages on top of them, before being sorted by automated machines or dropped by forklifts. If you're sending something *that* fragile, cough the extra for a specialist carrier. Marking a package as 'fragile' doesn't work, largely because probably 75% of all packages are marked fragile, even when they're clearly not. Deopt workers quickly learn to ignore such markings, especially when the boss is cracking the whip shouting "faster! faster!".
Strangely enough, UPS is one of the better carriers here in the UK, possibly because as an outsider in the UK market they try harder than the incumbents. If you really want something broken, send it ParcelForce. They could crush a solid aluminium block :P
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So you refuse delivery on the grounds tha the goods were mishandled.
Thank you.
I'm sure that rant will cause OP to change his ways and handle every package as if it were Baby Jesus in swaddling.
In a world where the ruling class are rewarded for not giving a shit, why should he?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Maybe the reason there are more incarcerated blacks than whites in the US is because blacks are somehow inherently intellectually inferior and unable to apply themselves other than violently.
Or maybe not, and this is another case of a bigot using his prejudices to divine some sort of causation.
I can accept that in order for me to have a package sent from somewhere in the bowels of the USA to my door step here in Canada within 2 days for under $50 .. some corners need to be trimmed.
Like the wages bill for the legion of highly trained and helpful staff you want to answer the phone? There is a reason we have to put up with shitty menus and recorded messages. Everyone wants the best deal and when looking at the cost of a service they don't factor in the value of support when things go wrong.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What bothers me is that sensitive equipment which can be inperceptively damaged by such handling is difficult to detect. Specifically, hard drives. They are the basis of our society, and damage from improper handling can often take days, weeks, or months to determine after the fact. It is not fun to receive a box of disks which has been thrown, jostled, and dropped needlessly; you find out at 3am when several members of an array fail at the same time.
I'm not going to make excuses for poor service, but items that can be damaged through normal (or abnormal) handling should be packaged to survive such a trip. Not only the exterior corrugated parcel but in the example you cite, drives need to be engineered to handle such potential shocks. Don't drives park the heads in a safe zone now? Or are you referring to the platters being damaged?
UPS offers packaging assistance for any shipper, but having been in logistics for a number of years, I can tell you few take advantage of it. UPS, Fedex, the USPS and all freight companies invariably look at the way items are packaged before paying any claims. In my experience, many shippers are clueless when it comes to proper protective packaging, or if they feel the cost is higher than absorbing damages, won't spend the extra money to package their merchandise properly.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
That's not necessarily true. A good friend of mine worked in a management position for a few years after college, and one of the stops on his rotations through company departments was shipping. He was expected to be out with the employees he was managing at least part of the time, especially under exceptional circumstances. Just because a job requires a college degree and has excellent compensation (which his did) doesn't meant that it's not going to have its crap moments.
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF