Fed Ex now too

  • Thread starter Deleted member 115360
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Deleted member 115360

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I would really like to know how all of these shipping companies have just fallen off the rails. I had 3 packages shipped roughly the same day last week with FedEx. They were all flowing along perfectly until they hit Memphis. All 3 were showing out for delivery the day before yesterday, and needless to say none showed up. Now they all 3, from separate shippers show to have never left Memphis, and they have no delivery schedule. No information available. Usps shouldn't even exist, and UPS has been falling apart at the seams recently, but I thought good ol FedEx would be able to keep it together. The economy is in the ditch, so I don't believe they are actually swamped with packages, unemployment is super high, so it isn't like they can't hire help. I just don't understand.
 
Memphis is such a dump these days. I'd imagine finding decent employees there could be difficult. Time magazine rated it the number #1 city in America to raise a family in one year in the 1950's. Now it's a bucket of urine on the side of the Mississippi River.
 
Using USPS, I ordered a new wildlife calendar back in the first week of December thru ebay. Ten or so days later, I did not have it and began tracking. Long story short, it did not arrive until January 24th., Tracking showed it got stuck in Memphis for most of that time.
 
I have been shipping extra supplies to members here using usps flat rate boxes and everyone has showed up on time 3-4 days depending on destination. have shipped 20 packages this way this year all with tracking# and on time undamaged.

heck with the ups store here and the hub is 40 miles away. fedex has been good here but for the price flat rate boxes have been the way to go
 
Sent a letter overnight certified return receipt USPS from SW MI to Philly. Nothing important just my entire financial life in paperwork for a financial institution to move some money around.

Took 5 days to get to Philly, sat in Philly 5 days, I contacted my local PO Master and she contacted the Philly hub directly. Magically they found it and delivered it immediately but clearly only due to help from local PO Master. Or kick in butt.
 
Sent a letter overnight certified return receipt USPS from SW MI to Philly. Nothing important just my entire financial life in paperwork for a financial institution to move some money around.

Took 5 days to get to Philly, sat in Philly 5 days, I contacted my local PO Master and she contacted the Philly hub directly. Magically they found it and delivered it immediately but clearly only due to help from local PO Master. Or kick in butt.
I bought a gun on gunbroker back in about July. The fella was in Pennsylvania, and he shipped it usps. It also went to Philly and disappeared for a full 30 days. They could not find it. After about 34 days the local postmaster mailed me everything I had to fill out for the insurance claim. It magically appeared at my lgs that afternoon. The local postmaster couldn't explain how it was delivered. It was never scanned again after it entered the Philly depot.
 
The economy is in the ditch, so I don't believe they are actually swamped with packages, unemployment is super high, so it isn't like they can't hire help. I just don't understand.

The economy is not in the ditch and all the shipping companies are operating at daily levels now that were considered peak volumes 15 months ago. Ecommerce is up significantly in the last few weeks because of tax season and government stimulus checks hitting accounts. It's spring, so retail stores are getting in their spring and summer inventory which increases volume in the networks too. The military's spending is always strong, so all the affiliated industries still have plenty of volume coming and going as well. Then there's the weather delays (it's still winter you know) throughout the country. Just because it's sunny where you are, doesn't mean it's that way everywhere. Hubs are only capable of processing a certain volume of packages. It's not about staffing, it's about the way the entire system is engineered. You can't just crank the speed up on the conveyor belts to process the freight faster. If a hub can sort 300K packages a day at max capacity but 310K are presented, 10K packages will have to be staged, there's no way around it.

Unemployment is high because a high percentage of the population is either unqualified to do the job, or simply unemployable. Do you have any idea how many people can't pass a simple drug test? How about watching some of these folks drive? Just because some yokel can get a CDL and drove a truck around for a while, doesn't mean he's capable of the technical driving required in a package van like a UPS or FedEx truck. Try running a criminal background check and you lose 10-15% of the applicants right off the bat. Now tell try telling the remaining applicants that they're actually going to have to do physical labor AND have good customer service skills; you just lost another 50% of the remaining applicants. Once you get the rare applicant who meets all the requirements and sticks around for a couple months, how long do you think they'll keep a good attitude when customers accuse them of stealing their packages or think it's acceptable to berate a driver for something that's out of the driver's control? The fact that anyone even thinks of getting into the delivery industry surprises me sometimes.

The most common suggestion is to just pay everyone in the industry more because that would help with hiring and retention. In order to do that though, shipping costs would have to go up. Then customers would have a fit because they're paying more and don't see an immediate improvement in service.

There's a lot more to the whole delivery industry than most people are aware of. I think the fact that just about any of the major carriers can move a package from coast to coast in less than 5 days with the level of accuracy that they do is pretty spectacular.
 
The economy is not in the ditch and all the shipping companies are operating at daily levels now that were considered peak volumes 15 months ago. Ecommerce is up significantly in the last few weeks because of tax season and government stimulus checks hitting accounts. It's spring, so retail stores are getting in their spring and summer inventory which increases volume in the networks too. The military's spending is always strong, so all the affiliated industries still have plenty of volume coming and going as well. Then there's the weather delays (it's still winter you know) throughout the country. Just because it's sunny where you are, doesn't mean it's that way everywhere. Hubs are only capable of processing a certain volume of packages. It's not about staffing, it's about the way the entire system is engineered. You can't just crank the speed up on the conveyor belts to process the freight faster. If a hub can sort 300K packages a day at max capacity but 310K are presented, 10K packages will have to be staged, there's no way around it.

Unemployment is high because a high percentage of the population is either unqualified to do the job, or simply unemployable. Do you have any idea how many people can't pass a simple drug test? How about watching some of these folks drive? Just because some yokel can get a CDL and drove a truck around for a while, doesn't mean he's capable of the technical driving required in a package van like a UPS or FedEx truck. Try running a criminal background check and you lose 10-15% of the applicants right off the bat. Now tell try telling the remaining applicants that they're actually going to have to do physical labor AND have good customer service skills; you just lost another 50% of the remaining applicants. Once you get the rare applicant who meets all the requirements and sticks around for a couple months, how long do you think they'll keep a good attitude when customers accuse them of stealing their packages or think it's acceptable to berate a driver for something that's out of the driver's control? The fact that anyone even thinks of getting into the delivery industry surprises me sometimes.

The most common suggestion is to just pay everyone in the industry more because that would help with hiring and retention. In order to do that though, shipping costs would have to go up. Then customers would have a fit because they're paying more and don't see an immediate improvement in service.

There's a lot more to the whole delivery industry than most people are aware of. I think the fact that just about any of the major carriers can move a package from coast to coast in less than 5 days with the level of accuracy that they do is pretty spectacular.
I'm sure there is alot of truth in that explanation.
 
I would really like to know how all of these shipping companies have just fallen off the rails. I had 3 packages shipped roughly the same day last week with FedEx. They were all flowing along perfectly until they hit Memphis. All 3 were showing out for delivery the day before yesterday, and needless to say none showed up. Now they all 3, from separate shippers show to have never left Memphis, and they have no delivery schedule. No information available. Usps shouldn't even exist, and UPS has been falling apart at the seams recently, but I thought good ol FedEx would be able to keep it together. The economy is in the ditch, so I don't believe they are actually swamped with packages, unemployment is super high, so it isn't like they can't hire help. I just don't understand.
Check the weather in Tenn. Flooding and the people who work there may be effected...you think?
PS: I have a reloading die coming from Tenn. so I have been following the 'progress" of the USPS which seems to have a similar problem.
 
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