The best and cheapest overnight shipping service...

timwinters

timwinters

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...on a Friday.

I changed my oil on Thursday and had a EGT probe acting up that I needed to diagnose while the cowl was off so I had EI send me one in case it wasn't just a bad connection. Fortunately, it was just a bad connection and EI said I could return it if I didn't need it (they're such good folks).

By the time I was done it was too late to ship so, on Friday I...

dropped the probe in the mail (priority) to Bend, OR.

dropped the oil sample in the mail (priority) to Ft. Wayne, IN

The probe arrived at 10:50 this morning.

The oil sample arrived at 9:44 this morning.

And I frequently do this on Fridays...they're quite consistent at gettting it there on Monday.

For $5.25/ea.

Try doing that with FedEx or UPS.

Many like disparaging the USPS but it's my experience that they do one helluva job especially with their priority and express services. During the week both packages would've made it in two days and for a price far cheaper than any two day service offered by the other two.

FWIW.
 
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BTW...conversely...when I used to work for FedEx, of course, I'd use them exclusively.

I was in Harrison, AR. The FedEx center that served us was in Fayetteville. I needed to send something to the avionics shop at Fayetteville and thought to myself "hmmm, I can send it two day, it'll be at the center tonight, has no farther to go, so surely they'll deliver it tomorrow."

Nope.

Wrong.

They let it sit at the center until day 2 before delivering.
 
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My experience tell me that if it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight, give it to FedEx. But that's me (with a lot of bad experiences with USPS and UPS but none with FE), so YMMV.
 
One thing that I can tell you about FedEx is that the Guaranteed AM delivery is a waste of money (and I think I've mentioned this here before).

They don't run special trucks for these packages. So, if the recipient is on that truck's morning route, the package will get there in the morning regardless if you pay for AM delivery or not. If it's on the afternoon route it'll get there in the afternoon regardless.

At least that's the way it was about 11 years ago when I worked for them. It was free money and less than 5% of the packages that arrived in the afternoon were caught by the customer and a refund demanded. It was actually less than 3% IIRC but that's been awhile and it was far from my area of responsibility which was real estate.
 
timwinters said:
One thing that I can tell you about FedEx is that the Guaranteed AM delivery is a waste of money (and I think I've mentioned this here before).



They don't run special trucks for these packages. So, if the recipient is on that truck's morning route, the package will get there in the morning regardless if you pay for AM delivery or not. If it's on the afternoon route it'll get there in the afternoon regardless.



At least that's the way it was about 11 years ago when I worked for them. It was free money and less than 5% of the packages that arrived in the afternoon were caught by the customer and a refund demanded. It was actually less than 3% IIRC but that's been awhile and it was far from my area of responsibility which was real estate.
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I've caught them and gotten free shipping before. Also have caught Amazon Prime missing by a day.

But they definitely play to the folks who don't pay attention.
 
USPS does screw up. A few years back they delivered my Verizon bill four months late. :)
 
timwinters said:
For $5.25/ea.

Many like disparaging the USPS but it's my experience that they do one helluva job especially with their priority and express services. During the week both packages would've made it in two days and for a price far cheaper than any two day service offered by the other two.

FWIW.
Click to expand...

It is amazing how cheaply things can be done when you aren't accountable for,oh I don't know, making a profit. They are improving though and only lost $2 billion last quarter. :dunno:
 
Ron Levy said:
My experience tell me that if it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight, give it to FedEx. But that's me (with a lot of bad experiences with USPS and UPS but none with FE), so YMMV.
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Tell that to the cooler of temperature-critical samples FedEx lost for a day on me this past June. Cost our job a few grand in re-sampling costs. Not the first time in my career they've done that either.

I've shipped hundreds of priority mail packages in the last 5 years for another business, and 100% have arrived on time. Used UPS far less, and they screwed more than a few. The key with USPS is to use pre-printed Priority mail labels that are bar-coded for their system. Cheaper by 10%+ to print the labels from online too, plus free boxes (both flat rate and non-flat rate Priority mail).
 
kevin7500 said:
It is amazing how cheaply things can be done when you aren't accountable for,oh I don't know, making a profit. They are improving though and only lost $2 billion last quarter. :dunno:
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You may want to research the reasons for that a bit deeper, and ask yourself how much every other large company in the US would be in the red ink if they were held to the same standard for retirement funding reserves.
 
Jeff Oslick said:
You may want to research the reasons for that a bit deeper, and ask yourself how much every other large company in the US would be in the red ink if they were held to the same standard for retirement funding reserves.
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What are you talking about? You mean FedEx and UPS aren't required by congress to have fully funded retirement accounts for employees that aren't even born yet?

Really?

I

did

not

know

that.

:rolleyes2:
 
kevin7500 said:
It is amazing how cheaply things can be done when you aren't accountable for,oh I don't know, making a profit. They are improving though and only lost $2 billion last quarter. :dunno:
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The reason they lose money is because congress mandated a screwy pension payment scheme that no one else has to follow.
 
I may complain about usps from time to time, however it think it is pretty amazing that someone will walk into my office, pick up an envelope, and someone else will hand deliver it on the other side of the country for forty some cents.
 
Paulie said:
The reason they lose money is because congress mandated a screwy pension payment scheme that no one else has to follow.
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Actually...they just have to reserve for the retirement exactly like every private business. They want to be treated like the government and pay it out of current expenses.
 
Jeff Oslick said:
The key with USPS is to use pre-printed Priority mail labels that are bar-coded for their system. Cheaper by 10%+ to print the labels from online too, plus free boxes (both flat rate and non-flat rate Priority mail).
Click to expand...

I always use "click and ship" and do everything at home on the computer. It also beats standing in line at the Post office. It's great.

I gotta say, the biggest scam the USPS has going is PO Boxes.

Let's see???

You'll bring the mail out to my house in a vehicle and deliver it for free.

But, to walk across the building and drop it in a box, you charge me $50 per year.

And I'm dumb enough to pay it! Mostly because we live 1/2 mile off the road, can't see our mailbox, and when I was still working, it wasn't unusual to get a six figure check every month. I really didn't want that sitting in a rural mailbox.
 
timwinters said:
I always use "click and ship" and do everything at home on the computer. It also beats standing in line at the Post office. It's great.

I gotta say, the biggest scam the USPS has going is PO Boxes.

Let's see???

You'll bring the mail out to my house in a vehicle and deliver it for free.

But, to walk across the building and drop it in a box, you charge me $50 per year.

And I'm dumb enough to pay it! Mostly because we live 1/2 mile off the road, can't see our mailbox, and when I was still working, it wasn't unusual to get a six figure check every month. I really didn't want that sitting in a rural mailbox.
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My P.O.Box at the university is free. I actually haven't paid rent on it since '09. So either that covered me until I'm gone or it's badly billed. :D
 
My favorite is still the UPS guy who struggled to get a heavy shipping crate up the freight elevator to a data center then ran in to the receptionist, asked her to sign, said it was too big to bring in, and when she called us and told us our brand spanking new $25K Cisco core switch had arrived, we walked into the elevator foyer to find it had been speared right through the middle of the crate by a forklift tine. I have no idea how the UPS guy even got it up there, but loved that there was no possible way he could have missed that there were splinters and a giant hole with packing material falling out of it and a giant hole through the center of a three foot tall Cisco switch.
 
jbarrass said:
Actually...they just have to reserve for the retirement exactly like every private business. They want to be treated like the government and pay it out of current expenses.
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Not true try doing some research. Yeah the private sector is great at having a reserve, NOT.
I worked for Braniff got screwed out of pension.
 
Paulie said:
The reason they lose money is because congress mandated a screwy pension payment scheme that no one else has to follow.
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The pension funding was mandated back in 2006 and required a deposit of $5.5 billion per year for 10 years to offset future medical costs.

Losses by year since mandate:
2007: 5.1B
2008: 2.8B
2009: 3.8B
2010: 8.5B
2011: 5.0B
2012: 16.0B
2013: 5.0B

Since the mandate, the USPS should have attempted to increase revenue by $38.5 billion and has instead lost $46.2 billion. Even without the mandate, over that time frame the USPS lost $7.7 billion.

Even the USPS is projecting losses of nearly $16 billion by 2016, excluding the $5.5 billion pre-funding requirement.

http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_0217profitability.pdf

Maybe part of the problem is that they will throw a package on an airplane and fly it across the country for $5.25 when their private sector counterparts put it on a truck for nearly twice that amount. Sure, it is a great deal for you and I, but clearly a money losing business plan.
 
The postal service has many issues. Some are self inflected, others by congress. The simple truth is that if you privatized it, costs would soar. FedEx and UPS don't want to do regular mail service. They would cherry pick the higher value services and dump the rest.

FedEx and UPS have screwed up plenty of times.

The nation's economy truly depends on all three.
 
UPS destroyed a factory-new aileron of mine last year. I have no idea how, although possibly the truck went into the ditch because I saw one of that time frame near here wrecked. The crate was destroyed. The aileron was hanging out of it bent. And they had the balls to deliver it and say "What do you mean you're refusing delivery? It's fine.. it's how it was." the seller was furious, as was I. It took three freaking ailerons to get that fixed, but that's another story.
 
jonnyjetprop said:
The postal service has many issues. Some are self inflected, others by congress.
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And still more are inflicted by the internet.

I've almost forgotten what it is like to receive bills in the mail, and pay them by writing a check and stuffing it in an envelope with a pretty stamp.

The day will come when junk mail vanishes, too. When that happens, I hope the USPS can survive on package delivery, because what else will there be?
 
kevin7500 said:
It is amazing how cheaply things can be done when you aren't accountable for,oh I don't know, making a profit. They are improving though and only lost $2 billion last quarter. :dunno:
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As an aside, if I remember the story correctly...

A few years back (six to eight maybe) the USPS signed a contract with FedEx to move their Express and Priority mail for them. It was a great alliance. FedEx already had the planes and sort facility. They just needed to hire more pilots and folks to run the sort facility so they could make a second run each day.

And that's what FedEx does...makes a second run each day. First run is overnight for FedEx packages and the additional run is during the day for the USPS.

IIRC FedEx and the USPS split the profits. So, no, the USPS isn't losing money on the proposition.

But admittedly, my memory is a bit foggy on the exact arrangement so there may be a tad bit of bogosity included in the above rendition.
 
NoHeat said:
And still more are inflicted by the internet.

I've almost forgotten what it is like to receive bills in the mail, and pay them by writing a check and stuffing it in an envelope with a pretty stamp.
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True dat...

But on the other side of the coin, a whole lot of the stuff I order in the internet is delivered via USPS.

Not that it completely counters the loss of what you itemized, but it may in the future...if they stay aggressive.
 
timwinters said:
IIRC FedEx and the USPS split the profits. So, no, the USPS isn't losing money on the proposition.
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The USPS does not have any profit to share.

Sending a four pound, small box with two day service from GR, Michigan to Ft Lauderdale, FL with USPS cost less than $6 compared to $42 with Fed Ex. Then the USPS brags about how cheap their service is and about all the extras they throw in for FREE! Compared to $42 for Fed Ex, USPS could charge $30 and maintain the same position about being cheaper and maybe make some money.

I will never claim to be a business genius, but if my profitable competition was charging 700% more for the same service as me while I bleed money I would reconsider my pricing structure.
 
jonnyjetprop said:
The postal service has many issues. Some are self inflected, others by congress. The simple truth is that if you privatized it, costs would soar. FedEx and UPS don't want to do regular mail service. They would cherry pick the higher value services and dump the rest.

FedEx and UPS have screwed up plenty of times.

The nation's economy truly depends on all three.
Click to expand...

The big problem with USPS is that they aren't accountable to a sustainable business plan, and right now, they don't have to be. Their residential revenue stream has been drying up for years due to electronic communication. They have a massively entitled union workforce that they can't cut back sufficiently, and can't cut money-losing services. It isn't a result of incompetence in management as much as it's an entirely predictable result of being essentially another bloated government bureaucracy subject to political whim. The reality is that few need USPS, and the nation's economy certainly doesn't depend on them.


JKG
 
The other side of the "shipping service" coin.

My avionics shop sent my transponder to me via FedEx on Thursday. I assume they used the "three day super saver service". The package has been at our local terminal since Saturday morning (it only went form NW AR to SE MO). Checking on it via the tracking number, ever since Saturday morning the online status has been "At local FedEx facility. Package not due for delivery"

Now why would a company not provide their customers with better than expected service when it costs them absolutely nothing to do so? I certainly don't get it.

Compare that to:

My new lightspeed headsets were shipped from Oregon on Thursday via Priority Mail.
My EI fuel transducer was shopped from Oregon on Friday via Priority Mail.

My headsets arrived Saturday, my fuel transducer yesterday.

Who transports priority mail? FedEx.

Go figure.
 
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