Fed-ex the slowest, sloppiest ship in the shipping business.

UPS and FedEx are both terrible and the US Postal service is worse. Doesn't matter if you are on the receiving end or if you are a shipper.

As a frequent shipper, there is no competitive advantage to using either Fed Ex or UPS, as their pricing is exactly identical. The US Post office has lower rates but their service is even less consistent than the other two.

Also, every January they raise their rates about 4% across the board. This price hike first happened back in 2008 when gasoline spiked to over $4.00 a gallon. Funny, they keep raising rates every year even though gas hasn't really varied much in price for years and years.

They also charge a residential delivery surcharge of $3.95 per package, a fuel surcharge of about 5% of the shipping cost, and an extended delivery service charge of $3.80 per package. Thus it is possible to be charged almost $15 to send a 1 lb package from Minneapolis to rural Illinois, a distance of about 500 miles. Yes, it will get there in 2 days, but I can ship a 1 lb package through the US postal service to the same address for about $8. It might take three or four days to get there, however.

I'm really curious to see if Amazon is going to start their own parcel delivery service. I bet they blow the doors off of UPS and FedEx.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL

 

I work at a warehouse. We are on the receiving end of ground deliveries FedEx and UPS every day. I'd say the freight deliveries (as opposed to ground) of both are on a higher plain and generally of equal quality with other freight deliverers. With ground deliveries each have different issues in our area, but as a whole with UPS we get more that is obviously handled roughly, thrown around, boxes squashed, or broken/torn. Based on info from the drivers,though, I think UPS offers much better benefits to their employees than FedEx. Quantity-wise, we get 2 to 3 times as much stuff delivered via UPS.

For my own (personal) shipping needs, I use USPS -- mostly books, which go by media mail. USPS is much less expensive than UPS or FedEx, and so far I've only had them lose one package. I replaced the book, but the first package actually arrived at its destination a couple months late.

In what we receive I see a lot of waste in companies shipping things by onesies on ground trucks, when they could palletize it and ship it on a freight truck much cheaper. I get the impression that companies don't care, because it is less work for them, and they just pass the cost of shipping along to the customer.

 

Facing pressure on one-day shipping, Amazon offers its workers $10K to quit their jobs — and start their own delivery services
Published: May 13, 2019

Amazon wants its employees to start their own businesses — delivering packages for Amazon.

The company announced a program Monday that will offer employees who quit their jobs $10,000 plus three months’ gross salary to start companies delivering Amazon packages.

Facing pressure on one-day shipping, Amazon offers its workers $10K to quit their jobs — and start their own delivery services

 

I asked a driver with one of the other companies for his take on Amazon starting their own deliver service. He says they only want the big cities and are not interested in small places and rural delivery. Just his opinion, for what it is worth.

 

That makes a lot of sense. It would mean that Amazon would be competing, and probably beating, UPS and FedEx in urban areas, and that would leave the US Postal service as the only viable entity to service rural areas.

 

Speaking of Amazon...
---
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is rolling out machines to automate a job held by thousands of its workers: boxing up customer orders.

The company started adding technology to a handful of warehouses in recent years, which scans goods coming down a conveyor belt and envelopes them seconds later in boxes custom-built for each item, two people who worked on the project told Reuters.

Amazon has considered installing two machines at dozens more warehouses, removing at least 24 roles at each one, these people said. These facilities typically employ more than 2,000 people.

That would amount to more than 1,300 cuts across 55 U.S. fulfillment centers for standard-sized inventory. Amazon would expect to recover the costs in under two years, at $1 million per machine plus operational expenses, they said.

The new machines, known as the CartonWrap from Italian firm CMC Srl, pack much faster than humans. They crank out 600 to 700 boxes per hour, or four to five times the rate of a human packer, the sources said. The machines require one person to load customer orders, another to stock cardboard and glue and a technician to fix jams on occasion.

 

USPS Media Mail is subsidized by the government, so everyone can take some advantage of that, especially Amazon.

 

There are odd relationships between USPS and both UPS and FedEx that I don't understand. For example, sometimes we might get a box from the post office that it seems UPS has delivered to them, or a box on a FedEx truck that appears to have been picked up at the post office. Drivers don't seem to be able to explain it either (at least to my understanding); of course, someone else loads their trucks, at least in the case of UPS.

 

I can see handing off to the USPS, as only they deliver to PO Boxes, and they deliver everywhere, which could significantly reduce redundant routes.

But handing off to FedEx? Does it get there earlier in the day? Are they handling overflow?

 

I meant FedEx and USPS, not FedEx and UPS; I don't think there is swapping between FedEx and UPS, at least as far as I know.

 

We have a postal facility in the warehouse district near the new airport where FedEx drops trailers of merchandise for delivery to certain zip codes. My guess is that so many warehouses have so many trailers that the Post Office has neither the trucks and trailers nor the drivers to pick up from all the warehouses. The Post Office does make deliveries and pickups of both packages and skids of merchandise to warehouses daily but only on a small scale.

The Indianapolis postal facility handles only FedEx trucks and it is 24 hours a day 6 days a week.

Warehouses are strict because trailers are stolen.