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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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