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Amazon Looking To Abandon UPS, FedEx In Favor of Its Own Delivery Service (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A report by The Wall Street Journal claims that Amazon is building its own shipping service to replace FedEx and UPS, giving it more control over its packages and possibly allowing it to ship packages from other retailers. Amazon has said its own delivery services would be meant to increase its capacity during busier times of the year, like the upcoming holiday season. However, "current and former Amazon managers and business partners" claim that the company's plans are bigger than that. The initiative dubbed "Consume the City" will eventually let Amazon "haul and deliver" its own packages and those of other retailers and consumers. That delivery network would also directly compete with the likes of UPS and FedEx. It makes sense that Amazon would want to sell, ship, and deliver orders on its own. The report estimates that the company spent $11.5 billion on shipping just last year, amounting to 10.8 percent of sales. The shipping process is currently a bit convoluted: packages from Amazon warehouses get sent to one of two shipping routes, either FedEx or UPS, or to a sorting facility that lumps all packages with similar zip codes together. FedEx and UPS handle its shipments and deliver them to customers, while the packages at the sorting facilities either get delivered via USPS or by Amazon employees themselves. If Amazon were to have control over its shipments over longer distances, it's estimated that the company could save about $3 per package -- about $1.1 billion annually.
These shitty courier companies that don't give a shit about the receiver as long as they keep their big contracts finally have to get off their ass and stop being shitty.
See the Amazon trucks everywhere.
If this is actually implemented will be interesting to see how much they save in a few years-- especially as they will end up re-building the existing infrastructure.
The article didn't mentioned it but I'm also curious if they start using their own electric vehicles as well? (Similar to how Google has backup DC power to their servers.)
i.e.
It will also be interesting to see how Fedex and UPS respond to this.
I wonder if Amazon will pass along any savings to customers?
Uber took away the taxi driver jobs, but I didn't say anything because I wasn't a taxi driver. ...
Amazon took away independent courier jobs, but I didn't say anything because I wasn't a courier.
You know how this ends
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
But I'll believe it when I see it. UPS, FEDEX and USPS carry millions of packages. Amazon would have to buy a truck to replace every single UPS, FEDEX and USPS truck out there and staff them. Plus the back end infrastructure (warehouses, long haul freight, air planes). It would take decades for someone the size of Amazon to wean themselves off of the big three.
Amazon said they were considering using drones to deliver packages, so using their own employees ... tomato / tomato.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Well, maybe. You don't save $ by having "control over your shipments", you'd save by making your shipping system more efficient than alternative shippers. FedEx & UPS are pretty darn good at it and have a lot of experience. Trying to break into that game would be costly and maybe foolhardy. Just the fleet management alone could be enough to eat up any "savings". Selling the service to other companies in addition to delivering your own stuff might work albeit not immediately profitable.
It might work out but I think you'd have to throw a lot of money at it to prime the pump.
Seriously, loosing the USPS won't be a good thing in the long run.
It's easy to overlook all the good things the USPS does for this country and it's economic system because we have all grown up with the mail arriving 6 days a week, rain or shine, for nearly nothing. First class postage is still under $1 for a letter picked up and delivered door to door, usually in a few days. It's a huge bargain if you ask me. Priority Mail goes for $4 and gets there in less than 3 days. This kind of service keeps this economy going. I understand that the USPS isn't as necessary as it once was, and that's part of it's financial problems, but I believe it's still a necessary function.
What's UPS going to charge you for a letter? $10? $5? And then they just drop the letter off at the local post office for delivery to your door usually. Same with FedEx. DHL (back from bankruptcy I suppose) doesn't deliver to residential customers and I haven't seen their prices. USPS delivery is a bargain and throwing out all that will only hurt us all.
Perhaps we could scale back delivery days and save labor costs. Say three days a week to the door and only weekday delivery to P.O. boxes? That would drop about half their labor costs, keep service levels high for those who need it, and perhaps allow the USPS to get back to even instead of loosing money all the time.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I have stocks in both UPS and FedEx. Thumpo!
I purchased both of them during the dot-com bubble. I was itching to get in on the "dot com profits", but did feel the companies were overvalued. My reasoning was that the Internet as a whole would continue to grow, but that existing companies were individually too unpredictable.
Thus, I looked for stocks that would grow as a side-effect of the Internet rather than direct Internet stocks. I cannot say all my stock picks were good decisions, but this set in particular mostly was.
Table-ized A.I.
Hard to understand how we have not applied historical norms of Monopoly to Amazon, Google, Facebook etc...
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
the only reason they could "save money" over companies that have been perfecting supply chain logistics for 30+ years is that they would destroy wages. and the only way to do that is to destroy the unions.
dont let them lie to you and tell you it is anything else.
Fuck FedEx and definitely FUCK ONTRAC.
I see the amazon white vans everywhere in Chicago area. Generic white van with magnetic amazon logo on the side. They ones I have seen drive like maniacs, really fast through narrow parking lots. I just assumed they hired in a similar manner to uber, i.e. , anyone with a drivers license can be a delivery truck.
Somehow they managed to crush and warp a massive steel PC case of mine. Forklift accident I guess?
Having worked as a USPS employee, I can say that it is the most backward, non-functional business entity I've ever seen. They mess up literally everything - paychecks, deliveries, sorting, spelling employees names correctly, badges, scheduling - literally everything. From an efficiency standpoint, USPS going under would be a good thing. And if Amazon quits using them, they will sink. Any employee of the USPS that knows what's going on will tell you that securing Amazon contracts is the only reason USPS is still around.
That said, USPS employs a lot of people. If they sink, all of those people will be out of a job, and that's a bad thing no matter how you slice it.
IMO, the best case scenario is a very likely one: Amazon takes over the USPS either in a management capacity or outright acquires it. Many people think this will happen at some point. Already a large part of USPS policy has been changed, and is dictated by the Amazon contract requirements. More than a few employees jokingly refer to the USPS as the APS (Amazon Postal Service)
Remember that the only reason the USPS loses money on paper is due to having to pre-fund pensions for employees literally not born yet within 10 years.
Their unprofitability is 100% manufactured by Congress.
I have a friend who works for Amazon complaining about having to sign for a (very low cost) shipment he got through UPS from Amazon. Then he said he couldn't wait for Amazon to have their own delivery service so he wouldn't have to do such ridiculous things anymore. He clearly did not realize that the reason the UPS driver needed his signature was because AMAZON chose the "signature required" option when they shipped it.
Amazon is going to do the same thing in many ways, request that UPS or Fedex do something which is inconvenient for their customer and then use it to make the customer prefer the Amazon shipping service (similar to the sorts of things they did to make people think Prime was a great deal).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I find that FedEx is usually pretty good; I get that Amazon could save themselves a lot of money by doing their own delivery, but they might want to maintain a relationship with FedEx, for times when delivery volume exceeds current capacity or when other factors compromise their own fleet's ability to deliver. As for UPS, well, it's like that other common brown thing - it stinks, and nobody likes it. If Amazon flushes them, good riddance.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
First class postage is still under $1 for a letter picked up and delivered door to door, usually in a few days. It's a huge bargain if you ask me.
Of course it is. And it's a huge bargain because the USPS is operating at enormous losses, losing ~$8B per year.
What's UPS going to charge you for a letter? $10? $5?
We don't know because they're not allowed to, unless the letter is "urgent" (overnight or 2-day). I suspect that their prices wouldn't be much higher (if any) than USPS, at least for urban areas. They might even be lower. People who live in more rural areas (like me) would likely pay a bit more, but that seems fair, just part of the cost of rural living.
And then they just drop the letter off at the local post office for delivery to your door usually. Same with FedEx.
That's because it's illegal for them to use mailboxes or to deliver first-class residential mail, thanks to the government-guaranteed USPS monopoly on mail delivery.
Perhaps we could scale back delivery days and save labor costs. Say three days a week to the door and only weekday delivery to P.O. boxes? That would drop about half their labor costs, keep service levels high for those who need it, and perhaps allow the USPS to get back to even instead of loosing money all the time.
That might work. While we're at it we should eliminate the monopoly and allow UPS and FedEx to compete with the USPS on all sorts of shipping, and remove all of the remaining subsidies. Let them all compete head to head on price and convenience, on a level playing field.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I dunno about you guys in the US, but for Brazil, this would possibly make me consider buying again from Amazon.
I've got scammed and ripped off by both Fedex and UPS here in Brazil. It's not a problem for US citizens to worry about, but both companies charge some crazy unjustified service taxes for everything they bring here. I can't imagine an Amazon based delivery service being any worse. Though it'll probably take a long time, if it ever happens, that Amazon would bring something like that here... Brazil has even worse challenges to any company trying to replace the national postal service here.
That's not _quite_ what the obligation is.
The obligation is that the USPS must set aside _all_ the money that it anticipates to have to pay for healthcare and pensions for _each_ of its current employees (and -obviously- every new employee that it hires) from now until that employee retires, as soon as they hire the employee. They must also set aside all money required to meet their healthcare and pension obligations for all of their retired employees.
To make that a little clearer:
If the USPS hires an 18-year old employee, they must:
* Set aside at _least_ 39 years worth of expected healthcare payments
* Set aside ~21 years of pension payments
I'm unaware of any other organization that is required by law to run in this manner. I'm also unaware of any other organization that _actually_ operates in this manner.
What these requirements _do_ do is let politicians "truthfully" say that the USPS hasn't made a profit in quite some time and _imply_ that the USPS is "just another example of government waste and mismanagement". :(
Disclaimer: I have worked for pretty much all the major package services and a few minor regional ones. /* They cannot die soon enough. 95% of my mail is paper spam that goes straight into the trash. The rest is either packages (that could go by UPS instead) or bills from Luddite companies that are too dumb to figure out how to save money by sending e-bills. */
Most of my mail is "bulk mail", but I assure you that while *you* don't see a use for it, I can assure you that there's plenty of people who continue to clip those coupons and use those flyers to inform their purchasing decisions. Otherwise, they (the bulk mailers) would cease paying for those flyers. If you don't like catalogs, you can usually find a way to unsubscribe from them. I have a few printed magazine subscriptions (shock! horror!) that also have digital editions I get as part of the bargain; I vastly prefer the printed page. I also like to have paper bills for some things. It's hard to hack a paper bank statement or get tricked into opening a malware-laden letter. Email, on the other hand... /* I haven't sent or received a personal letter in over a decade. Why would anyone prefer that over email? */
Good for you, you want a fucking cookie? I write a few a year. Why? Because actually *writing something down* and sending it to someone is so much more meaningful than shooting off a generic email or worse, a text. I sent my girlfriend a letter even though I see her, face-to-face, so she can read my words, in my hand-writing. I also correspond with some folks overseas; it's easier to include actual instax pictures and drawings, etc vs email with attachments. So you might not find this useful; I do. Maybe you need to make some friends. /* How about zero days a week? That would save even more. */
You are aware the USPS is not funded by tax dollars, right? And if it weren't for the asinine requirements created by the GOP in an attempt to submarine the USPS (which, btw, is mandated by the fucking Constitution), the USPS wouldn't be having the issues it's currently having? And how much does it cost to send a parcel via UPS vs the USPS? Let's see: The USPS delivers something like 500 million pieces of mail per day, to EVERY. SINGLE. DELIVERY. POINT. IN. THE. US. No matter how rural you are, the USPS doesn't say "nah, that route isn't profitable, fuck those people." UPS and FedEx? They can discriminate and, like other services, can take the low-lying fruit, i.e. the most profitable routes and tell everyone else to fuck off. but I digress. Think about that: 509 million pieces of mail, 6 days a week. UPS, on its busiest peak day (the lead up to Christmas) doesn't even hit 30 million packages. FedEx Express does less than 3 million (peak is less than 4 million before christmas), and FedEx Ground averages between 4 and 5 million a day. Let's dump 500 million pieces of mail on their systems and see how well they can do. I'll tell you flat out: not very well. Peak was already a nightmare for the few weeks between thanksgiving and christmas.
Let's see this list of countires with no government run postal service, please.
TL;DR: Shut the fuck up, Bill. You're a fucking idiot.
Now the shipping/logistics folks get to join in on the fun of being actively hated by your employer!
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
For some reason they seem to hire people who can't read an address, let alone get out of their fucking car.
Delivery #1 - Phone call from Washington DC number, girl who can't speak English asks for wrong name, asks if I live at address that is incorrect. Once I figure out who the hell it is, I say correct address they say ok. (It's an apartment, there's a fricking buzzer) 1 hour later I get call from same number, I tell her to buzz the door, she doesn't, says she's outside. I go outside and she's half a block down buzzing the wrong building. (our buildings are clearly marked with the number on it) FFS lady!
Delivery #2 - Another call from DC number, dude says he's outside. I go outside, and dude is parked in the middle of the street blocking traffic, opens his door and passes the box to me from the seat of his car.
These people are wearing Amazon badges/clothing. It's a wonder they managed to get dressed in the morning.
FYI - I get packages _all the time_ and FedEx, UPS, and USPS - even DHL has never had a single problem delivering to me.
If Amazon wants to SAVE money on shipping, how about they pay attention to the size of boxes and packing material in comparison to the original item purchased?
https://www.buzzfeed.com/moren...
This makes me wish I'd taken pics of the packaging for the two circle batteries i just received for my key fobs for my car, because that shit was ridiculous!
Why do you choose to deal with "Luddite companies that are too dumb to figure out how to save money by sending e-bills"?
Let me guess your answer: "because those are the companies that provide a service most closely approximating to what you want, at a price you're willing to pay".
That tells a story in itself.
They cannot die soon enough. 95% of my mail is paper spam that goes straight into the trash. The rest is either packages (that could go by UPS instead) or bills from Luddite companies that are too dumb to figure out how to save money by sending e-bills.
USPS is faster and cheaper for 90% of the stuff I ship or receive, I've got no complaints. As for the junk mail, blame the credit card companies.
I haven't sent or received a personal letter in over a decade. Why would anyone prefer that over email?
No cards? No official mail? Not much of a life eh?
Plenty of countries no longer have a government run postal service. They are doing just fine.
Our postal service isn't really government run (well, depending on your definitions I guess). It's a self-financing entity that has a bit of government protection while the employees are considered civil servants. As long as it's self-financing, there's really no reason not to have it around.
"Passing along the savings" = further underselling their competitors/increasing their marketshare/increasing their customers' dependence on them/increasing the number of orders.
Shit, the whole point is this.
The USPS is only losing money now because legislators want it to die, so they can wipe out one of the great socialized success stories. There was a time, for a LONG time, where the USPS was profitable and self-sustaining -- at least while I was working there a little over 10 years ago.
First class postage is still under $1 for a letter picked up and delivered door to door, usually in a few days. It's a huge bargain if you ask me.
Of course it is. And it's a huge bargain because the USPS is operating at enormous losses, losing ~$8B per year.
It is worth mentioning that ~$5.5B of that is congressional mandated debt in the form of pension pre-payments for a pension fund that is already 100% funded. The other thing to note is USPS has very little control over their own pricing. They need congressional approval to set pricing and get mandates from congress but no actual funding from congress.
They do get some perks like tax exceptions on property like other government agencies, but I'm not sure if that out weighs the limits of being overseen by a congressional committee.
I do it because it is mandated by my county government. Or at least was. The last holdout just fell. I haven't used the USPS in over a decade, probably longer. And even the holdout, I always paid in person because I didn't have any stamps and no place sold them.
And some countries do not even have postal service and houses do not have addresses.
Actually, it can be a sound business move.
Two words come to mind: vertical integration.
If they take over more components within the chain that makes their business possible, that can be a key cost reduction and allow them to compete even more fully.
The (likely?) mistake would be if they were to expand outside of their core business. In this particular example, if they were going to try and use this delivery mechanism for "more than just Amazon packages" and offer shipping options to competitors, they may expose themselves to greater chance of failure because, frankly, their core competency isn't "shipping."
Think of it this way: since FedEx/UPS are looking to make a profit, they must charge an amount that has parts X (actual costs for people, vehicles, equipment, etc. to deliver a package) plus Y (the amount to be profitable).
If the shipping is such a core part of Amazon's business (which it is), then eliminating the "Y" portion of the overall shipping costs in favor of absorbing the overhead of managing the X may boost their revenue significantly.
Given the volume they ship and how core that is to them being successful? I think it makes perfect sense for Amazon to consider eliminating the middle man and seek to deliver packages directly to their customers. The REAL question is: can they actually do it? Lots and lots and lots of logistics, planning, new systems, new solutions... plenty of opportunity to screw it up. But, IF they can manage it, then it can be a serious game-changer in Amazon's favor.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
Fedex has an enormous airfleet. I'm sure they are able to buy planes at prices other people can only dream of. Similarly UPS has a fleet of over 100K vehicles, which can be bought at a great discount (present supplier seems to be Daimler-Benz).
I doubt Amazon can get anywhere close to those savings by going on their own.
If Amazon's service winds up even vaguely resembling their favorite go-to delivery whore these days, OnTrac, I hope it dies in an inferno. Amazon likes to always specify no-sig-required with all of its deliveries now. Amazon does this to please the carrier and get a discount, because only one delivery attempt is ever required. Since the package will be simply left unattended if no immediate response to the delivery is apparent, this results in package theft, among other things. The Machiavellian behavior of some delivery drivers, ESPECIALLY those of OnTrac, to exploit this no-sig-required condition leads to some to the "other" consequences, like drivers dropping heavy packages six feet over a locked gate onto concrete on a rainy day (personal anecdote, happened twice).
You're confused. They're a software company!
I've wondered if UPS is called brown not just because of uniforms and trucks, but the packages seem to arrive broken and covered in mud.
Amazon has been doing this in the Pacific Northwest for several months already.
And until recently, you could always tell an "Amazon" delivery because the packages were left out in the rain, thrown over the fence, dropped in the middle of the driveway, or otherwise mishandled by lazy-ass delivery people. But I suspect they've gotten a lot of complaints, because the last couple of Amazon-delivered packages were left at our actual door - what a concept!
#DeleteChrome
Especially after UPS does silly things like this: http://imgur.com/gallery/ZrZea
Especially after UPS does silly things like this:
Hey UPS, enlighten me...
I'm getting a taste of Amazon's own delivery service and I am unimpressed. I'm a Prime subscriber. I just placed a $100 order on Monday for several items, most of them Prime eligible. Some of these Prime eligible items originate 45 minute drive from where I live, so why is Amazon, using its own delivery service, taking until Friday to deliver? Prime is 2-day, not 4-day, delivery. Based on the size of the order I could have gotten free shipping without even being a Prime member, and probably gotten about the same level of service, too.
As a Prime member of Amazon, I get free two-day shipping. Of the last five things I ordered from Amazon, three were delivered by Amazon Fulfillment, Amazon's in-house shipping service. I've lived at the same address for more than 20 years, and of those five packages, guess which three were NOT delivered to my house, but to my neighbor's? The three sent through Amazon Fulfillment. If they're going to replace FedEx and UPS, then they're going to have to do a bit better job.
I get more and more of my Amazon stuff via USPS, and it's a good deal, it seems. for all concerned. The USPS has to drive the route anyway, so why not carry something? On our rural route, UPS, FedEx etc can't make money, UPS in particular has a bad attitude as mentioned elsewhere and a high rate of damage to the product. I'm not sure how Amazon actually gets things to the local USPS so fast - clearly they didn't just mail it, as regular mail is never "two day" around here, but I'm getting the stuff on time. Fedex has been super good from McMaster-Carr, sometimes under 20 hours from mouse click to delivery - in good shape and with good attitude - on *ground* shipping. I also have no clue how they manage that, other than that McMaster has warehouses all over. And they are good the few times Amazon uses them. But really, in my case nothing beats the USPS these days (wasn't always so, they don't like big stuff) "out here". My mail persons are all nice as can be, know where to leave stuff if I'm not home (will even lock it in one of my cars if it seems valuable), don't get fiddly about details and make me go somewhere (at my further cost) to get what I already paid to have delivered to me. One of my mail people is a retired physicist doing it "for fun" and often drops in just to chat about my physics work. It's another world from what most city folk experience. We'd really hate to lose them "out here". No way Amazon is making money off me. A small order every few days on prime - if you figure the UPS rates *I'd* pay, prime pays for itself in a month or two. Maybe that's what's driving them.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
In the boonies, where many of us heat with woodstoves, snail mail spam is called "free fuel". Some of us even write letters (though I tend to print mine as my handwriting isn't great, or maybe even include a gasp - paper check - for record keeping that doesn't have bit-rot and isn't subject to hacking quite the same as e-transfers are. Selection bias much?
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Trump has a dead squirrel on his head. He thinks people think it's real hair. He's as delusional as his voters. Soon to be President Elect Clinton will revel in his failure.
Actually in recent times more of the stuff I order from Amazon has come via USPS than the other 2 carriers put together
(I have Prime)
This is a good thing because I know when the mailman will come, UPS and FedEx could come anytime during the day.
USPS is by far the best to ship stuff, faster, cheaper, they'll pick stuff up and hand you your mail if you're home at the time since they walked to your front door for the pickup (at least here they goto that effort). Or print your shipping, and go drop it off at one of a bazillion post offices.
This is a good thing because I know when the mailman will come,
The "free two day shipping" I get from Prime is "two day by 8PM". Do you know your mailman delivers as late as 8PM? I know they don't here, and neither does UPS or FedEx. (I know when the UPS and FedEx trucks show up here, by the way.)
Artical 1, Section 8.
Well, technically, it just empowers Congress to establish Post Offices... I guess it doesn't say they HAVE to.
I don't care what you say, I liked that book, "The Postman".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
You make a good point.
On the other hand, UPS and FedEx are deisgned for any customer to send any type of package from anywhere to anywhere, using any of many services. Amazon's will be designed for only Amazon to send packages from the places they choose, and they need not deliver everywhere - they can have UPS deliver to small towns for them. Amazon doesn't need to ship those cookies grandma made for you and she's shipping from Tiny Town, Colorado, paying by check. Amazon Shipping will have one customer sending packages, and sending only from Amazon's warehouses, using the standardized box sizes that Amazon chooses.
There may be enough differences that although Amazon can't make a better retail shipping company, they can make one that works better FOR AMAZON, for some packages. You may have seen the back of a UPS truck looks a bit chaotic because there are all these different sizes and shapes of boxes. On Amazon trucks, they'll all fit neatly and efficiently on the shelf, with one medium box being exactly same the same size as two small boxes.
Nice to see the Planet Express guys getting work.
Three hours and 90-odd comments before this, and no Futurama? Hell, Bezos probably doesn't care about the costs, so long as he cures his crippling bone-itis.
Sweet bacteria of Liberia, what this place has become.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
You did not read the synopsis:
"The initiative dubbed "Consume the City" will eventually let Amazon "haul and deliver" its own packages and those of other retailers and consumers. That delivery network would also directly compete with the likes of UPS and FedEx."
It will ship Grandma's cookies to you.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I honestly do not recall the last time I got an Amazon package via UPS (and never FedEx). And this is in a decent sized suburbia. For at least two years now, probably longer, everything arrives by USPS and frankly they are just as reliable as was UPS, perhaps more so.
is the option where *I* as the paying customer get to control how packages are delivered to me, and by which service.
And I am happy to pay the associated shipping costs for my choice - I never asked for "free shipping"
I cannot order from Amazon at all, ever, because shipping is "pot luck" and I *MUST* know how something will be shipped BEFORE placing any order.
UPS CAN NOT deliver to me, PERIOD. I can accept FedEx, but need to list a different delivery address. Or I can go with USPS to my home address (preferred)
Amazon REFUSES to let the customer specify a carrier, or even INFORM which carrier will be used, until after you submit your order including payment information. Until they change that I must refuse to order anything from Amazon.
The USPS is not losing money as a result of its own operational costs vs income.
All the money the USPS is "losing" is being paid into a fund to pay retiree benefits for employees 75 years into the future - YES, that would include costs for employees that have not even been BORN YET.
http://www.deliveringforameric...
And note that by law, the USPS can NEVER make a profit. "Breaking even" is the absolute BEST it is ever allowed to do.
Not just "a bit of government protection".
It is expected to be self-financing and self-operated, but unfortunately any major decisions require the approval of congress, which means it is prevented from solving its problems by the same congress that created those problems.,
They think they can use Independent Contractors to get out of kinds of costs like.
Commercial insurance
Minimum wage
Cell phone reimbursement meanly (CA and other places)
Over time
car / truck / van expenses reimbursement and inspections
CDL's for drivers
Lost / stolen stuff.
Workers comp
Hours on duty for drivers
Perhaps the very first self-driving vehicles would rather deliver packages than people? I do not think quadrocopters are reasonable delivery methods esp. considering battery technology but a surface vehicles combined with somewhat automated (or at least standard) mailboxes, why not?
4wdloop
sweet, could you show me how that lets me send the original signed documents through that? what about my package deliveries? how about my financial records where I need physical copies for tax audit purposes? I am glad you don't do anything of value in life that requires documents, the rest of us do!
As I understand it, you'll get packages at 8 if you're near a depot, if you're in a city with lots of businesses, or if your calendar says "December".
Even in your area, they probably deliver things late around the holidays. There's a period around Christmas where the package delivery services hire lots of extra temp employees to handle the extra load, and the delivery hours tend to get extended as a result. I think I even remember seeing one of the carriers in my neighborhood after 8 on occasion.
Also, if you're close to a FedEx or UPS depot, they'll do runs even later. Their depots are both within half a mile of the edge of my neighborhood, so every FedEx and UPS truck in the South Bay literally comes around the back side of my neighborhood when they get off the freeway an exit early to avoid the last two miles of parking lot on the 101.
As a result, I routinely see FedEx and UPS out at six or seven at night making their rounds as they work their way back to the depot at the end of the day, and I've seen multiple trucks doing deliveries here—presumably because they know that they can just toss our packages onto pretty much any truck that goes out that day, and it will be close enough to their route to not be a problem. :-)
Finally, if you have a lot of businesses nearby, they'll deliver your packages after hours. They have to get all of their business deliveries finished by 5:00 (or maybe 4:00, I forget), which means that home deliveries usually happen either early in the morning or in the evening.
As always, YMMV.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Yes it is.
"the Postal Service would have lost $10.8 billion without the prefunding requirement."
- http://townhall.com/columnists...
And the USPS get lots of benefits:
"pays nothing in property tax, nothing in licensing or sales taxes for its vehicles and no state or federal taxes, even on its competitive products. It does pay federal tax on income from those products, but it pays those taxes to itself."
- http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...
Completely false.:
"the law only requires pre-funding of obligations to actual current and past employees."
- http://www.cnbc.com/id/4501843...
You're welcome.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I spend thousands of pounds purchasing things from Amazon. whenever a order does not turn up in time I cancel it. I live a stone throw away from Amazon.
Amazon delivery drivers are good.. they are all basically cheap labour from Eastern European countries they have to carry a tracking device so Amazon, can track them at all times. The other companies are absolute bastards.
I have 5 CCTV cameras, security systems around my property linked to the Internet so I can monitor my property from work. It has motion detection and its sensitivity is set from 1 to 9 so you can set the distance of its motion detection, to stop it from recording trees, swaying in the wind.
A black man from UPS, says he won't deliver to my place any more because he doesn't like to be "under surveillance"
I now only get deliveries from Amazon deliveries, which is always the next day.. No more pretending that they tried to deliver and "failed to deliver because they got no answer" nonsense.
CCTV as minutes hours times and dates you enter in what time they say they tried to deliver and you send them the video clip of a high definition video from your secure Internet storage by switching that clip of video to public viewing.
>The USPS delivers something like 500 million pieces of mail per day, to EVERY. SINGLE. DELIVERY. POINT. IN. THE. US.
I guess you haven't heard of those areas in the lower 48, where the post office delivers a flyer saying that service will be cut for Winter on the nth of October, and resume on the nth of March. It isn't uncommon for service to resume a couple of weeks after the flyer says it will resume. On more than one occasion, the carrier has, just before delivering the flyer, crossed out the printed date, and written in that day's date.
> No matter how rural you are, the USPS doesn't say "nah, that route isn't profitable, fuck those people.
Nor have you apparently heard of those places that have ZIP Codes, but to which the United States Postal Service never makes deliveries.
Both FedEx and UPS have ZIP codes for which they are the only carrier.
They already did this in the UK about 6 months ago, replacing the existing couriers with Amazon Logistics. Which incidentally, is a plain white van, here anyway.
Where before you could track your package and get told within an hour when it'd turn up and get regular updates (unless it was a cheap item which they sent via Royal Mail), now you're told on the day that it's out for delivery and that's the extent of the "tracking". It can turn up any time that day. Be careful what you wish for, as I find this a step backwards. They're also more strict in my experience - if you get something like a mobile phone, they insist that YOU are there in person with ID. So that means you have to get a day off work to wait for it and can't just have your family member who's already at home receive it, or if you get it delivered to work they have to track you down (so in places like mine where you could be anywhere in the factory and they have to wait for you to respond to a call out, they'll be less inclined to continue allowing personal deliveries)
I can only go by the UK version of course, the US policies and systems could be completely different.
On the plus side, you tend to know audibly when your package has turned up. Obviously a carrier is a carrier, they all do much the same thing, but there is something unique about the exact noise of the sliding van door, the amount of time they seem to need to rummage around looking for your package, and the "bleep!" of the barcode scan they do just before they ring the bell. It wouldn't surprise me if they trademarked the "Amazon Delivery Noise Pattern" :)
It doesn't necessarily make sense at all.
An airline might spend a third of its revenue on POL, but that doesn't mean it "makes sense" to dig wells & build a refinery.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In those countries nobody can read.
I would be interesting to see if they save any money here as well, considering UPS operates on about a 7-8% profit margin. Considering Amazon is such a large customer I would be willing to bet they make far less profit on Amazon shipments. Not a lot of room for savings unless they believe they have a new better way of doing shipping.
UPS had an operating profit of around 13% last year according to their annual report. That is plenty of margin to make it worthwhile for Amazon to want to vertically integrate their shipping.
Several considerations:
1) Amazon's retail business is a low margin business to begin with and they compete significantly on price - even a few percent can matter a lot. Walmart has margins of around 2-3% for comparison. If Amazon can eliminate the margin leakage to UPS that goes straight to their bottom line.
2) Integrating vertically has the benefit of having better control over the service you provide to customers. It is almost always harder to coordinate with an outside company than to deal with another internal division.
3) Amazon developing their own shipping service allows them to expand their business beyond shipping stuff sold through their own website. They could very conceivably capture business from UPS and FedEx and USPS. This creates a whole new revenue stream for them and diversifies the company somewhat.
UPS has a revenue of about $60 billion per year, while Amazon pays about $5 billion in yearly shipping costs. This puts them in an entirely different order of magnitude as far as scale goes. This makes it even less likely Amazon would save a lot of money.
You're looking at it the wrong way. The question is whether Amazon's freight service can reach minimum efficient scale in order to compete effectively. They don't necessarily have to match UPS in size to achieve comparable cost efficiency. Bear in mind as well that any shipments they do themselves they could in theory provide at or even below cost in order to scale Amazon's freight business AND that is revenue and profit not available to UPS/FedEx. Even if they don't try to make a profit on the freight at first it allows them to offer better pricing to customers (thus increasing retail revenue) and makes it even harder than it already is to compete in online shopping with them. Amazon also has the advantage that they can play UPS and FedEx against each other while they build their freight services.
Frankly it's kind of a no brainer for Amazon to get into the freight business in some form or fashion because vertical integration makes sense for them in a lot of ways. I also expect them to try to get into the office supply business (think Staples) and industrial supply business (think Grainger) in the near future in a big way. I think Amazon would kick the ass of the incumbents in those industries.
It's illegal for UPS to deliver first class letters, the USPS has government created monopoly on letters.
You don't save $ by having "control over your shipments", you'd save by making your shipping system more efficient than alternative shippers. FedEx & UPS are pretty darn good at it and have a lot of experience.
Untrue on both counts. First off any time Amazon (or anyone else) ships via UPS or FedEx they are experiencing margin leakage to the tune of something like 8-13% which is actually quite a lot of margin in a low margin industry. That is money that could stay within the company if Amazon could vertically integrate. It's highly unlikely that for a substantial portion of Amazon's customer base that they couldn't save money by taking over at least a portion of the freight themselves. They certainly save money on back haul shipments they do themselves today and they could easily tackle the last mile problem piecemeal by offering Amazon delivery in dense population centers first. They don't have to replicate the entire UPS network from day one.
Trying to break into that game would be costly and maybe foolhardy. Just the fleet management alone could be enough to eat up any "savings".
As long as Amazon can achieve minimum efficient scale (look it up) on their freight services they would not be at a disadvantage. It's actually fairly routine for large companies like Walmart to have their own fleet of transport vehicles because it saves them money.
It might work out but I think you'd have to throw a lot of money at it to prime the pump.
Of course it would be a huge investment. But Amazon has the resources to do it and they are their own customer for the service so they don't have to sell the service to anyone else immediately. Furthermore they don't even really have to make a profit on the freight services. They could build their retail business by merely providing freight at cost which would allow them to sell products at lower costs to customers thus capturing more marketshare and making it harder still to compete with them online.
FedEx and UPS are bit players. USPS is the big gorilla in the room.
Not in package shipping they aren't. USPS is small potatoes in the package shipping business. In Q2 2016 USPS shipped $1.2billion in packages. UPS had revenues 10X that amount over the same period the vast majority of which was in package shipments.
In a week, USPS moves more than UPS does in a year. FedEx is smaller. It takes USPS just 3 days to do the same.
You are comparing letters with packages. Not a meaningful comparison. In theory USPS could compete strongly in package delivery but they haven't been effective at it to date.
Amazon's network may be big, but they won't be UPS/FedEx big.
They don't have to be as big as the third party couriers networks. Amazon doesn't have to roll out delivery everywhere all at once to be efficient at it. They could simply start with population centers like NYC and back haul. Over time they build it up AND they have a guaranteed customer unlike the freight couriers.
Their intent was pretty obvious.
If you didn't see this coming when Amazon bought a Boeing 767 and labeled it Prime Air, then you weren't awake.
Of course that's only a single aircraft. That won't replace dozens of Fed Ex and UPS aircraft, two global fleets of (500,000) vehicles and the unprecedented U.S. Postal Service rolling ~50,000 Grumman LLVs on Sunday mornings.
But every torrent starts with a single drop. Or 767 as the case may be.
People who live in more rural areas (like me) would likely pay a bit more, but that seems fair, just part of the cost of rural living.
How would that work? Most people receive far more mail than they send, and the sender isn't likely to want to pay more to send to customers in rural areas. It would be a nightmare to administer too, because a simple stamp wouldn't be enough any more, you would need to do a database lookup just to calculate the cost of sending a letter.
Also, you might not care, but people with less money living in rural areas might.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
i ignore any product that has 'fulfilled by Amazon' as the only shipping option. I detest private couriers with their policy of "left with a neighbour" idiocy - packages just dumped with anyone. At least with standard mail if no-one's around to collect it simply returned to the local sorting office for later collection
In London (and lots of the UK I believe), most of my packages are sent by Amazon Logistics.
All Prime deliveries that aren't bulky seem to come through them. Large items still use normal courier firms, or if it isn't an Amazon sold item.
About half the time I'd get a better experience with Royal Mail..
Amazon Logistics is run like Uber - random drivers sign up, go fill their car with packages, and then drop them off on the day. You get no surety as to the time (7am-10pm is the helpful window they give you). Mine have mostly come 5-7pm. The courier firms will often have an app that will give me notifications, or sms me a one hour delivery window, which is a much much better experience.
Luckily there is an Amazon Parcel Point box just next to me, so I've been able to switch most things that would come via Amazon Logistics to there.
With all that said, this is the Amazon/Bezos model. Launch it fast, get it out there, see if it can work in a city or two. Then they scale at unbelievable speed, while continuing to iterate on the product, improving it slowly but surely, or just killing it early and walking away. Bezos has big picture, long term planning, for most everything he does.
I'm always discovering new Amazon services, AmazonFresh (which is launching meal kits like everyone else now), Prime Now (now also delivering from restaurants), Amazon Pantry, Amazon Tickets (West End or Broadway show tickets - only just discovered this the other day!), etc.
--Q
When I went away for a few weeks I used to come back to a stack of letters waiting for me. The last time there was exactly one, an annual statement. I've moved all my bank statements, bills and spam to email now. Letters I do get are immediately scanned and filed for a year, then shredded.
In other words, letter volume is falling and will likely continue to do so. On the other hand, package volume is increasing as more stuff is sold online. For any postal service to survive, it needs to adapt to this.
The big innovation we really need is a giant size post box that can take large packages securely. A few people have tried (e.g. Hippobox) but none have taken off.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You are comparing letters with packages. Not a meaningful comparison. In theory USPS could compete strongly in package delivery but they haven't been effective at it to date.
They're fucking morons, that's why. They are shit at everything. My post office has had a notice up for the last decade about routing loops caused by mismatching zip codes and cities. The USPS scans literally every package to find out where it is supposed to go and then throws that data away — after, of course, handing it to the FBI. So they can't check whether a routing loop is occurring because they have no records of whether a packet — er, make that a package — has traversed a particular sorting facility!
They also have a problem with following procedure. My local post office decided for me that they would hold all my small packages and I could just come in and get them. That's not what I want. What I want is for them to follow the fucking delivery instructions. If it says do not deliver without signature, then hold it. If it doesn't say anything, put it in my fucking mailbox. I made many dozens of trips to the post office to pick up $5 packages from China, wasting my time and fuel because they decided to "help". The one time I did file a hold as I was going away for a week, they failed to follow the instructions completely. I said it was OK to deliver letters, but hold packages, and I would come and pick up all held mail at the end of the hold. They delivered nothing while I was gone (that's OK) but then went ahead and delivered everything including packages to my mailbox at the end of the hold, which I had explicitly asked them not to do.
The USPS would have gone out of business by now if they weren't delivering small packages for UPS and FedEx, which people would rather use than the USPS because they are dramatically more competent. And, of course, planet-raping dead tree spam. Thanks, USPS! You're fucking shitlords.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't understand people that complain about the USPS - it's one of the most impressive logistics operations the world has ever seen.
Can you come up with a better way to get a letter from South Florida to Anchorage, Alaska in a few days for less than $0.50? Neither can anyone else.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Feel free to use "electronic mail" to send me new sway bar end links for my girlfriend's car.
You knew that was ridiculous when you hit 'submit'.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It also might be "because it is impossible to have a private company run their own pipes to my house for water and sewer service"
Don't be a fucking moron.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Fedex also announced that they're looking to move away from using the USPS for last-mile delivery. With that and this Amazon news, it doesn't look good for the USPS.
Of all the stuff I've ordered from amazon (reasonably large number 2-3 packages a week ) The only packages deliveries I constantly have issues
with are those from "Amazon Logistics"
The letter carrier will come, forget to bring the package (or maybe just not feel like delivering it?), and lie and send a "delivery attempted" update. MY wife has watched to letter carrier come and go, never approach the front door, and 10 minutes later the SMS notification pops up on our phones. A former roommate of mine once found a letter containing a check she had mailed in a pile of scattered mail in the park. I guess the carrier was feeling a little overburdened that day?
I personally love UPS. I've never had a serious issue with them in 15 years of ordering stuff from Amazon. I know other people here have huge problems with them and that's fine. I think the point is that how good your service is depends hugely on how well run your shipper's local hub is run. My local post office is the pits, while my local UPS carriers are great. This is why Amazon should let prime members set carrier preferences. My opinion of Amazon has plummeted since they started using USPS in my area. I'd never received a package through USPS from them before last year and would like to never again.
except delivery of 'physical goods'.. rest can be done all electronic; please rally to change those century customs that require paper -- it does not bring any additional so called 'security'. calendar says it's 2016.
In fact USPS does junk mail delivery just helping the big guys (1%).
Back to the future of monopolizing the entire supply chain.
The evening route for FedEx at our place regularly runs between 7 and 8 p.m. Packages often show up while we're putting the kids to bed. UPS is usually a little earlier, but after I'm home from work, so 6-7. USPS is around noon, and only ever then.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Paper bits rot much faster than electronic bits
I wanted to ship an older computer to my parents. USPS was significantly more expensive that UPS for some reason. USPS wanted $60 to ship it and I'd bet it was only worth $80. UPS took care of it for $40.
I don't know, but it works for me.
No it's not, they just have to put a first-class stamp on it.
Let's suppose we lived in that world. It's 2036, and sending a letter costs $10. Are you better off than you were in 1996 (when it cost 32 cents), or worse off?
We might be better off. Sure, it costs thirty times as much, but you might be having to do it less than a thirtieth as often. I'll admit my memory is foggy, but I'm pretty sure that every damn month I was having to mail multiple bill payments. That crap is over, and we're all happier for it, aren't we? Nowdays, I'm snailmailing infrequently enough that I don't even know if it's something I do twice a year, or once every two years, or what. It's getting hard to measure, but one thing's for sure: it ain't much.
$10 for a letter would be ok, if you almost never had to use it. And aren't we heading that way? Isn't nearly every instance (I'm trying to be open to there being some exceptions, though I'm actually drawing a blank right now) where you can't use email, a situation where you view the requirement as being a consequence of someone else's fuckup, incompetence, anachronism, etc? (e.g. this AC's idea that "my financial records where I need physical copies for tax audit purposes" is a feature of snailmail, rather than a defect in government's information-provenance-verification procedures.)
I'm not even necessarily advocating the death of USPS. Maybe they'll "rightsize" to fit the country's communications needs, such that they are the ones charging $10 to deliver a letter. It wouldn't be so bad, if overall, we still end up spending less.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
> Seriously, loosing the USPS won't be a good thing in the long run.
It depends on where you live.
Most places I've lived, USPS is every bit as good as UPS and FedEx where the carriers will ring your bell or at least honk the horn if they've got a package for you.
Now, I live in a city but on a "rural route" (in a city) and they will not ring the bell. Instead, they leave the little slip letting you know that they expect you to do their work for them and go pick up the package. I would not have a problem with this if the post office were open beyond bankers' hours... but they close early and I work until 6pm. How the fuck am I going to get my packages without taking time off of work?
To make things worse, they scan the packages as "delivered" - but in the particular carrier's defense, she notates it "scanned as delivered PER SUPERVISOR." One time I asked her about this, and she said she puts "PER SUPERVISOR" because she has been instructed to scan packages as delivered but she knows that is essentially mail fraud so she clarifies that it is per instruction of her supervisor. She said the reason her supervisor does this is to make them not look bad to Amazon, because she makes her do this for ALL customers on this route when the package will not fit in the mailbox. Her supervisor has instructed the staff to not even load the packages on the truck.
Fuck the USPS. The sooner we let them die the better.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
As a normal person (truck driver), I have delivered to and picked up at hundreds of companies over the past 10 years. Wal Mart has the most efficient operation. The least efficient I ever saw was the USPS. Unbelievably stupid and slack. As a private company, they would immediately sink and die. And the most arrogant company I ever saw? Amazon, by far. They demand things of carriers that are unreasonable, and they are assholes to deal with. I admire Amazon efficiency, but they are the worst assholes I have ever dealt with.
"a bit of government protection"
i.e. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, which empowers Congress "To establish Post Offices"
Not many other government entities are listed in the Constitution.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Breitbart?
People know you're a racist, dude. The fact that you look around before you say "nigger" under your breath isn't helping.
I was almost with you until you quoted breitbart as aource
So a company famous for paying little to no taxes just because they supposedly operate at a very low profit level despite huge revenue plans to shift their shipping from companies that at least pay some taxes to a subsidy that will not. Shipping enormous amounts of goods over infrastructure payed with taxes. Hello?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Theoretically, these new entrants could include someone who is not born yet. While they have to account for these future liabilities on their financial statements they do not have to fund them if they are not related to their current or former workforce."
This seems to neatly sum up the differing viewpoints on the matter. From what I gather they don't have to start diverting real cash 75 years ahead (your talking point), but when they report the state of their finances they have to assume the liability 75 years ahead. People not born yet are, by law, affecting USPS financial reports.
Illiteracy is a horrible thing. Learn to read.
GP's response was to a complete idiot claiming that USPS was still a legit way to send *letters*, not packages.
Why can't my favorite brewery deliver to my door? Laws were created to keep things even but the distributors end up being owned or at least directed by the big brewing companies.
In this case, I feel that delivery companies will fight this and it will be stopped. At the very least, Amazon's delivery company will end up with a name other than Amazon to make the lawmakers happy. They will probably only be able to deliver a certain percentage of their own packages. They will probably end up using other carriers for rural or other dispersed areas.
This ain’t exactly news. Amazon has been not so quietly building out their transportation network for years.
They bought a regional delivery company around ten years ago and last winter they bought a not so regional one: http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazons-delivery-ambitions-take-on-industry-giants/
If you’re an Amazon customer in a market covered by Prime Now, you’ve probably already noticed that they are using the same people who deliver for Prime Now to deliver regular 2-day orders.
Hell, they even flew one of their Prime-branded delivery aircraft in Seattle’s Sea Fair show this year.
So, yeah, I don’t think UPS or FedEx is at all blind-sided by this. They may have no answer for it and it'll likely represents a major loss of revenue for both companies, but I’m sure they’ve seen this coming for years.
In Canada, in any area where there is a big Amazon warehouse, they already ship everything themselves.
If you order anything stocked by Amazon themselves in the Vancouver area for instance, it will get delivered by an Amazon-branded truck from their warehouse in Surrey.
What's missing is any long-distance shipping.
Great!
No more lost packages! This is the way to go! I really wish Amazon takes over every business, or in another words, I really hope every company copies Amazon model, where customer is really first. The happiest day of my life will be when I can finally quit my ISP for something with a service like Amazon. Google is trying but too slow...... ZZZzzz
Amazon's in-house shipping is terrible. They've already rolled this out to some cities. Horribly untrained people delivering packages. 5 of 6 AMZL_US shipped packages, of mine, were delayed in September alone. If they do this, I will cancel Amazon Prime. https://www.reddit.com/r/amazo...
I'm from rural Alaska. USPS works just fine there, year-round. Not sure what hellhole you've been hiding in.
It's hard to include a check. I pay for most things by credit card or direct deposit, but I still need to send checks off for a few services. (I understand bank transfers work much better in Western Europe than in the US.) I sometimes send things that depend on their physical format (such as greeting cards). I can put letters in envelopes with patterns on the inside to make sure nobody who doesn't open the envelope can read what's in it, but mail clients generally don't support encrypted email, and most of my friends are a lot less computer-savvy than I am.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I've had 4 major issues in the past 6 months regarding my Prime membership and every single one was caused by their pathetic excuse for a delivery service. This last one I had looked into 2 days after it was supposed to be delivered - they stated they had found the "lost" package and it would be delivered the next day. Guess what? I finally had them cancel the order, reorder and and they refunded an overnight shipping cost since they had overrun delivery by a full week at this point.
Last I ordered from staples they were using their own shipping service.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!