@guybemis wrote:
@lja440 wrote:
@guybemis wrote:
@lja440 wrote:
That is LOGISTICS. Do you really want any carrier to have trucks in a row at every location waiting to fill up so they can be drove in a straight line directly to their destination?
Carriers use a MORE EXPEDIANT system. Instead packages are instead shipped in the GENERAL direction to the next LOGISTICAL sorting center where they are consolidated with others going in the general direction. Such as the truck that took the item from Keasbey to Kendallville probably also had items heading into Missouri and further south. These would have split off in another truck going in that direction where your truck would have picked up items shipped from Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. This will be repeated as needed all the way to Portland. It may seem convoluted but I have been a mail carrier since 2000 and my late husband was a truck driver and dispatcher. IT IS THE MOST expedient system for 'less than truck load' shipping which is what is happening when you order something on-line or by mail.
Thanks, but that was NOT the most expedient way to get it to me. If the truck had just stayed on the Interstate, I would have received my item on time. As it was, it got to Portland too late to be delivered to me on the scheduled date. I'm not buying that a shipment from New York to Portland had to travel the back roads of Montana. I'm not buying that that was even the planed route. The fact that it got to me late, shows that something didn't go as planed. When I saw the tracking that it was in North Dakota, I wasn't overly worried, but as soon as I saw that the truck was traveling off the Interstate in Montana, I knew I was not going to get the item on time.
Normally cross country shipments stay on the Interstate highways, unless road closures force them to detour. I also checked the road conditions, and couldn't find any road closures that would have forced the truck to take that route. So I have no clue what the driver was doing.
Anyway this is a problem that seems to be unique to Fed Ex, where the truck takes a ridiculously long route. I have had it happen many times with FedEx shipments. I have never seen it happen to USPS or UPS. USPS has their own problems where items will get stuck in a loop, going back and fourth, but it usually stays on a pretty direct route.
The point I'm trying to make, is that all it takes is one rogue truck driver, taking the wrong route to make thousands shipments late.
Yes staying on the interstate would be more expedient IF HE WAS ONLY DELIVERING YOUR PACKAGE. I'm not a fan of FedEx in any way shape or form. But this is the way things work in the shipping industry and the way it always has. Your next package could come from the same location and take a trip through the sunny south if that is what is most expedient for the load as a whole.
Even if the package comes by air it may not come on a direct flight but have to take a few connecting flights.
You do know that FedEx trucks on cross country routes don't make deliveries along the way, right? You know that have a sort facility in New York that sorts the packages going all over then country, they they are loaded into trailers for each city, a seal is put on the trailer, and then it is transported to that city. When it arrives at the distribution facility in that city the seal is broken, and the packages are transferred to local delivery vans for final delivery. A FedEx 18 wheeler from New York to Portland doesn't stop off in Libby Montana to deliver a package to the John Smith resident.
Yes IF they have enough for a full truck at that moment. If not then they will send it LTTL and it will stop at other hubs, the seal broken part of the load offloaded and/or added to, sealed and sent on it's way. Unless it is going from major city to major city most likely there will be some stops along the way.
Hubby was a truck driver for most of his life and spent around 5 years dispatching, I know how the system works, I lived it both as a semi driver family and now as a USPS carrier.
