dang thats fast

tonycondon

tonycondon

Gastons CRO (Chief Dinner Reservation Officer)
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Tony
ordered my parents 10th anniversary gift monday night. opted for super quick shipping to make sure it got here in time. check this out though:

Oct 03, 200704:57:00 AMCEDAR RAPIDS IA USARRIVAL SCANOct 03, 200704:39:00 AMLOUISVILLE KY USDEPARTURE SCAN

I assume louisville is Eastern Time? still an hour 18 minutes is mighty speedy. maybe UPS figured out that whole time travel thing and isnt telling anybody. dang wouldnt that be cool!? you could ship something tommorow and get it yesterday!
 
Your box must have been in the last crate they loaded onto the plane which would be the first crate they unloaded. They are loading those planes as the pilots are doing their preflight and engine 'run-up' type stuff and unloading as soon as the left engine is spooling down. There is no 'wasted' time with UPS.

IIRC - the small 'box' is scanned as it is loaded onto the large 'crate'. From that point on, the 'box' bar code is tied to the 'crate' bar code. Any time the 'crate' code is scanned (arrive, depart, sort) the 'box' code gets the same status on a trickle down system. So while your 'box' may have arrived at CID at 4:57, it probably didn't leave the 'crate' for local sort until a few hours later. I'd be interested to know if they made it on the delivery truck today. If you did pay for 'super duper speedy get it here now' shipping, I'm sure they did get it on the truck this AM. If not, it's probably sitting in a semi at the local distribution center until they do another local sort tonight followed by load-out tomorrow around 5-7am.

It's been a couple of years since I went through UPS training, but I remember being very impressed with their logistics and SCM systems.
 
Also, UPS is now handling the entire distribution chain for many retailers. This is their new business model as they struggle to stay ahead of FedEx. It may be that the item you ordered was already packaged by a UPS employee, and stored in a UPS warehouse ready to go before you even logged on the retailer's web page. When you paid for it the money likely went to UPS, through a UPS-managed payment gateway. The retailer's website itself might have been designed and hosted by UPS. The only contact the business might have actually have with you was to get your $$ as part of a monthly disbursement of funds from UPS.

Or not. But many online retailers are now set up with UPS this way.

You gotta love the 21st century.
 
alaskaflyer said:
Also, UPS is now handling the entire distribution chain for many retailers. This is their new business model as they struggle to stay ahead of FedEx. It may be that the item you ordered was already packaged by a UPS employee, and stored in a UPS warehouse ready to go before you even logged on the retailer's web page. When you paid for it the money likely went to UPS, through a UPS-managed payment gateway. The retailer's website itself might have been designed and hosted by UPS. The only contact the business might have actually have with you was to get your $$ as part of a monthly disbursement of funds from UPS.

Or not. But many online retailers are now set up with UPS this way.

You gotta love the 21st century.
Click to expand...

Yup.. UPS isn't just in the 'box delivering' business anymore. One of their biggest SCM customers is Nike, by the way. When you phone an order to Nike, a UPS employee takes the order, which is pulled from a shelf in a UPS warehouse, which is put right on a UPS truck.

They are also doing SCM consulting for businesses as well. They will come in and tell you how to set up your warehouse/factory to be more efficient (or offer to take over the operation for you ;)).

Speedy fact: UPS 'brown' is actually "Pullman Brown" which was used on upscale railroad cars in the 20s/30s. At the time, the color was viewed as being tied to a very upscale hoity-toity operation. UPS bought the 'color' and has used it ever since.
 
Fdx only handles about 10% of the volume UPS handles. The only real competion between the two is in the high-priority overnight express shipping.
 
That business model isn't new. Many service companies were doing this back in the '90s. Order a part, if it wasn't local, shipped "MUST RIDE" next flight out of Memphis.
Funny how they expanded to fit a niche.
 
One of the CAs that I fly with used to fly for a charter company up here in the NE. He said back when he was flying Caravans and Navahos and such, if UPS or FedEx would get a late "rush order" package that missed the last truck or flight out of wherever, they'd charter a Caravan from his company to take it to the nearest sorting facility in time to catch the late night cross-country flight. He said it wasn't uncommon to be called at 1 or 2 in the morning to fly an envelope down to Portland, Boston, or New York for one of the shipping companies. The lengths they'll go to to get the package there on time.
 
We had a Falcon 20 from Ameriflight, or something like that, show up one evening with a box going to the John Deere plant. The box was no more than 8x8 inches. Poor pilots ended up staying in Ottumwa for three days because they didn't have anything to do...all because of this little 8x8 box. Must have been one important part!
 
bkreager said:
We had a Falcon 20 from Ameriflight, or something like that, show up one evening with a box going to the John Deere plant. The box was no more than 8x8 inches. Poor pilots ended up staying in Ottumwa for three days because they didn't have anything to do...all because of this little 8x8 box. Must have been one important part!
Click to expand...

Heh.. You should try working with farmers every day --- EVERY part is important enough to warrant stranding pilots in OTM for weeks on end. ;)
 
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