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USPS Logic

K

Kriegs

Feb 14, 2018
2,312
17,073
#1
So, I bought a bass body from a fellow TBer who lives about 60 miles away from me. Due to schedules not synching up, we both decided it was easier to just ship it.
So, we both live in the same state (Mass), like I said, about 60 miles away from each other. The package leaves his home in Massachusetts and heads to..... Jersey City, NJ! :bored:
So, thus far, doing some quick figuring on Google Maps, it looks like the body is going to make a well over 500 mile journey to end up a mere 60 miles from home :roflmao:
This isn't a complaint about the transaction, the USPS's employees or anything like that, just a humorous observation! I understand shipping hubs, etc. and I am very thankful that we have as robust of a postal system as we do.. but man, sometimes, the logic seems to just get left out of the logistics :)
</rant>
 
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#3
BassFishingInAmerica said:
I wonder if a system like Uber for making local (or nearby) deliveries would work?
Click to expand...
I'd wager that if you called an Uber to go from point A to point B, loaded the car carefully, etc. and had a person on the receiving end that would do the same, paid the driver and gave them a decent tip, they'd do it for the regular fee. At the end of the day, all they are doing is driving, just without some one to talk to, lol.
 
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#4
Kriegs said:
I'd wager that if you called an Uber to go from point A to point B, loaded the car carefully, etc. and had a person on the receiving end that would do the same, paid the driver and gave them a decent tip, they'd do it for the regular fee. At the end of the day, all they are doing is driving, just without some one to talk to, lol.
Click to expand...
The real question is whether it would be nearly the same cost. One thing for sure, it would get there sooner.
 
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#5
The one that irritates me is nothing to do with USPS, directly. Ordered something on sleazebay. "Shipped" Monday. Tracking status Wednesday - still hasn't made it to the originating post office. But it's "shipped" - yeah, right. But yes, I've seen shipments for here travel to absurdity and back, and sometimes end up the worse for wear as a result.
 
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#6
T_Bone_TL said:
But yes, I've seen shipments for here travel to absurdity and back, and sometimes end up the worse for wear as a result.
Click to expand...
Just what I didn't need to start thinking about :nailbiting:

j/k :thumbsup: I'm sure it will all be fine. Before the days of the interwebs, we just knew it took X amount of time for something to get somewhere, we didn't have the level of granularity of insight into our package's journey that we do today.
Heck, when I was 12 years old (1982), I flew from Rhode Island to Alabama to spend the summer on my grandparents' farm. I traveled 1700+ miles with no cell phone, no contact with my Mom until I got to my grandparents', maybe 10+ hours incommunicado. No problems, ever.
Today, we get all bent out of shape if we can't track our packages 100% of the time from the moment we pay for it until it is in our hands! :laugh:
 
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#8
Kriegs said:
Just what I didn't need to start thinking about :nailbiting:

j/k :thumbsup: I'm sure it will all be fine. Before the days of the interwebs, we just knew it took X amount of time for something to get somewhere, we didn't have the level of granularity of insight into our package's journey that we do today.
Heck, when I was 12 years old (1982), I flew from Rhode Island to Alabama to spend the summer on my grandparents' farm. I traveled 1700+ miles with no cell phone, no contact with my Mom until I got to my grandparents', maybe 10+ hours incommunicado. No problems, ever.
Today, we get all bent out of shape if we can't track our packages 100% of the time from the moment we pay for it until it is in our hands! :laugh:
Click to expand...
Once upon a time, I ordered the Led Zeppelin Complete songbook (remember those?) from Morninglory Music (in Cali, IIRC). You send them a check (remember those?) & 4-6 weeks later, your book arrives.

(I was still too young to have a real job)-
Every day, starting with week 4...I waited for the Mail. Torture!
 
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#11
Many PO's don't have a sorting function any more. They closed the sorting facility in our town (population approx 132K) and moved it to a town about 45 miles from here. So mail goes from the local PO to the sorting center 45 miles south-east of here, and back to be delivered to the next town with an adjacent border. Seems silly unless you're actually doing it with huge amounts of packages/envelopes to process.
 
#14
If I mail a letter to someone a mile away from me, it goes 170 miles to the sorting hub and then 170 miles back to our local post office for delivery. They used to sort out the local mail here, but they decided to do this to save money.:rollno: Our tax dollars at work.:thumbsup:
 
#15
Kriegs said:
So, I bought a bass body from a fellow TBer who lives about 60 miles away from me. Due to schedules not synching up, we both decided it was easier to just ship it.
So, we both live in the same state (Mass), like I said, about 60 miles away from each other. The package leaves his home in Massachusetts and heads to..... Jersey City, NJ! :bored:
So, thus far, doing some quick figuring on Google Maps, it looks like the body is going to make a well over 500 mile journey to end up a mere 60 miles from home :roflmao:
This isn't a complaint about the transaction, the USPS's employees or anything like that, just a humorous observation! I understand shipping hubs, etc. and I am very thankful that we have as robust of a postal system as we do.. but man, sometimes, the logic seems to just get left out of the logistics :)
</rant>
Click to expand...
I orders a low priority Fed Ex, item one time, that was a hand off to USPS, and it took day and days and days, they literally had to work harder to keep it it the back of the. process, then to get it to me, and the location was 1 day shipping.
 
#17
Thumpin6string said:
If I mail a letter to someone a mile away from me, it goes 170 miles to the sorting hub and then 170 miles back to our local post office for delivery. They used to sort out the local mail here, but they decided to do this to save money.:rollno: Our tax dollars at work.:thumbsup:
Click to expand...

Economy of scale. That means, if you do something a zillion times for a little bit less money it actually saves a ton of money. It's how you can manufacture a toy in China, stick it in a huge container, stick that container on a ship the size of a small town, run that ship across an ocean, dock it in Florida, put that container on a train, send the train to Atlanta, put it in a truck in Atlanta and run that to Raleigh, put it on a smaller truck and run that to my town, an sell it to me cheaper than if it were manufactured in Raleigh.

If you save a little bit of money on the front end, but you do that 15 million times, you have made up the difference in shipping and then some.

Same thing here. If mail a letter to my next door neighbor it goes to a hub 40 miles from here. But, if the hub can sort mail for a nickel less per package than my local office could, and they handle millions of packages a year..... you get where I'm going.

We could start a whole new forum on wasted tax dollars..... even waste within the USPS.... but it would cost more to have more sorting centers than it does to let a letter travel more.
 
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#18
USPS in the New York Metro area is god awful ... I always ask the seller, “can you please let me know how much more will it cost to use FedEx or UPS?” ....

I have my gear shipped to my office because I’m there most weekdays 8am-5pm .... there’s an elevator in the building right by the front door too but the UPS delivery person refuses to bring the package to the 4th floor so he leaves the package sitting on or next to the mailbox at the first floor lobby. This means I have to watch the tracking number on the app all day as I’m afraid someone might take the package.

They don’t care how you feel about their service because it’s a government bureaucracy.... just Google “USPS sucks” and you’ll see what I mean.
 
#20
two fingers said:
Economy of scale. That means, if you do something a zillion times for a little bit less money it actually saves a ton of money. It's how you csn manufacture a toy in China, stick it in a huge container, stick that container on a ship the size of a small town, run that ship across an ocean, dock it in Florida, put that container on a train, send the train to Atlanta, put it in a truck in Atlanta and run that to Raleigh, put it on a smaller truck and run that to my town, an sell it to me cheaper than if it were manufactured in Raleigh.

If you save a little bit of money on the front end, but you do that 15 million times, you have made up the difference in shipping and then some.

Same thing here. If mail a letter to my next door neighbor it goes to a hub 40 miles from here. But, if the hub can sort mail for a nickel less per package than my local office could, and they handle millions of packages a year..... you get where I'm going.

We could start a whole new forum on wasted tax dollars..... even waste within the USPS.... but it would cost more to have more sorting centers than it does to let a letter travel more.
Click to expand...

So far...one guy gets it!!!
 
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