This has nothing to do with climate or the usual WUWT fare, though it does shine a light on government inefficiency, so I thought I’d share this for entertainment purposes.
Last Monday, about 1PM on March 10th, I ordered an item on Ebay; an AC to DC power supply brick for a laptop. It was nothing special, weighed under 2 pounds, but I needed it quickly, and so I took advantage of Ebay’s feature where it will list items that are closest to you to choose where to order from.
Being in Chico, CA I chose a vendor in Haward, CA just 178 miles away according to Google Maps with a drive time of just under three hours. See map at right.
Normally by Fed Ex Ground or UPS I get parts from the Bay Area the very next day. Imagine my surprise when tracking the package on USPS.gov. Here is the chronology:
============================================================
- Acceptance Mar-10-14, 17:52 PM, NEWARK, CA 94560
- Dispatched to Sort Facility Mar-10-14, 17:55 PM, NEWARK, CA 94560
- Depart USPS Sort Facility Mar-10-14, 00:00 AM, OAKLAND, CA 94615
- Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility Mar-10-14, 20:06 PM, OAKLAND, CA 94615
- Depart USPS Sort Facility Mar-12-14, 00:00 AM, WEST SACRAMENTO, CA 95799
- Processed through USPS Sort Facility Mar-12-14, 14:31 PM, WEST SACRAMENTO, CA 95799
- Processed through USPS Sort Facility Mar-13-14, 18:43 PM, WEST SACRAMENTO, CA 95799
- Arrival at Post Office Mar-14-14, 04:34 AM, CHICO, CA 95926
- Sorting Complete Mar-14-14, 09:39 AM, CHICO, CA 95926
- Out for Delivery Mar-14-14, 09:49 AM, CHICO, CA 95926
- Delivered Mar-14-14, 12:43 PM, CHICO, CA 95973
============================================================
Almost any mode of transportation would have been faster than the United States Postal Service.
Driving: 2 hours, 52 minutes
Train: 3 hours, 7 minutes (Amtrak train plus bus from Oakland to Chico)
Pony Express: 2.37 days or 56.88 hours (Assuming they covered at an average speed of 12 1⁄2 miles per hour (20.1 km/h), including all stops, per this book. with a typical rider doing 75 miles in one day)
Riding a bicycle: 17.8 hours (assuming I could average 10 miles per hour)
USPS: 3 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes, or 90 hours 51 minutes. That gives an average speed for 178 miles of: 1.9592 mph. Even walking would have been faster.
Based on my experience with years of ordering parts from the Bay Area, both FedEx and UPS standard ground service would have had the package in my hands on Tuesday by Noon, a duration of ~18 hours.
No wonder the U.S. Postal Service is going broke with that sort of inefficiency and performance.
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If it wasn’t for global warming…..it probably could have got there much faster, for a cheaper price, and would have worked better too. Donch know. 😉
“The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.” ~ Eugene McCarthy
Hah! Makes Canada Post look GOOD! Um, for those of us up here, ebay have included Pitney Bowes in the loop, which seems to add another 10-30 dollars to the cost, another week or so to delivery elapsed times, while totally obscuring the meaning of any IF any, tracking info. Stuff from the UK and China gets here faster.
The US postal service is just a reflection of the EPA, another incompetent organisation, except much more dangerous.
The USA postal service is not vindictive and only seeks to slow down the economy, while the EPA is vindictive in its efforts seeks to destroy it for totally spurious reasons.
The additional heat and the restricted breathing because of increase in trace CO2, is obviously slowing down the post office workers, whilst the sceptical ponies are exploiting the situation for their own advantage. They should be jailed!
At least the parcel did arrive.
Back in the 1970’s a family member and his wife and kids were doing a stint with the UN refugee settlement system in the back blocks of Tanzania.
My mother sent an Australian calendar to him.
It never arrived somewhat to my family member’s disgust although a remarkably similar Australian calendar appeared around that time in the local Post Master’s office.
I suspect it hasn’t got much better in their postal delivery service since.
You have to keep an eye on those Canada Post guys. I had a slightly thick envelope of papers to send to my accountant, and Canada Post wanted to charge me a parcel rate! I think it was because the envelope was oversized at 11.5 x 14.5. Getting in my car and delivering the envelope myself was a much cheaper option.
Another thing working against USPS is its wage scale … where in the private sector would you find a mail sorter being paid $50K ?
At the rate things are going w/ USPS, they’ll soon just be delivering hard-copy spam.
I think the slowest is campus mail…22 h to go to the next building over.
The usps handles snail mail, advertising mail, and pkgs; fedex and ups are packages, and don’t have anything at the price of a 1st class stamp. And you should see what they have been driving over this winter in the midwest; my mail box is now about 4 ft from the “edge” of the road.
But looks like something weird happened in the W SAC depo …there almost 2 days, half of the total time?… maybe they needed to use your power supply…?
I don’t know why, but have to admit they are getting really bad.
My mail is now delivered about 8:30 PM by a mailman with a headlamp.
Your analysis does well to put things in perspective.
Walking is likely between 2.5 to 3 mph.
Now about the Pony Express … that’s so old, obsolete … and slow?
If there was a climate problem that’s the kind of “efficiency” that claims it can solve it.
Speaking of the government, sort of. On Climate Depot Sec of State John Kerry is quoted as saying, “if skeptics are wrong and nothing is done, life on the earth can literally end”. He has abandon all science and now raves on like a mad man. That explains a lot about our county’s foreign policies.
Incidentally about a month ago I wanted to find out the origins of ”going postal” and came across this.
Yet UPS can deliver a package from Amazon within 2 days. I would have no problem abolishing the USPS and letting UPS, FedEx, and any competitors take up the slack.
Check this one out. I ordered some thumb picks on Mar. 1 from Musicians Friend, and I still haven’t got them. It seems that they have been across the the US and back.
PackageID: MI0020142244630
Sequence Number: 031150304140450509
Zip Code: 93555
Weight (lbs.): 0.7500
Projected Delivery Date: Mar 8 2014
Delivery Confirmation Information
Delivery Confirmation Number: 9274890000668622446304
Date/Time Event Name Location
15 Mar 2014 09:50 Package processed by Post Office BELL GARDENS, CA
15 Mar 2014 06:31 Package processed by Post Office BELL GARDENS, CA
11 Mar 2014 09:04 Package processed by Post Office JERSEY CITY, NJ
10 Mar 2014 07:32 Package processed by Post Office SPRINGFIELD, MA
05 Mar 2014 17:38 Shipment Info Received by Post Office PHOENIX, AZ
Date Description Location
Mar 5 2014 Package transferred to Post Office LOS ANGELES, CA
Mar 5 2014 Ready for post office entry Fontana, CA
Mar 5 2014 Package received by dest MI facility Fontana, CA
Mar 4 2014 Package transferred to dest MI facility Kansas City, MO
Mar 3 2014 Package processed by UPS MI Kansas City, MO
Mar 3 2014 Package received for processing Kansas City, MO
I have queued for hours in US Post Offices at times, but had no idea they were hopeless back stage too. In Australia anything posted in Sydney is delivered in Perth (3,500 km.) the next day. I thought that this was normal.
I just received a microwavable bowl via USPS broken. I complained and the replacement arrived broken too. I told the seller to send it by UPS. He said he would–so I’m hoping it’ll be third time lucky.
Incidentally, in the interim I’ve been using my own ceramic liners in place of the broken inner bowl. (It’s a three-piece item.) It’s a wonderful way to consume soup and stew casually–away from a table–because of its innovative thumb-hook holder and its insulated outer shell. Here’s a link to its Amazon page:
http://www.amazon.com/Chef-Buddy-Cool-Touch-Microwave/dp/B004YN239A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394921608&sr=8-1&keywords=chef+buddy+cool+touch+microwave+bowl
I had a bumper sticker that I’ve given to my mailman that says, “Back off–I’m a US Postal Worker”.
I regularly receive orders and send packages via USPS to a location 125 miles away and each transaction occurs overnight. I’ll ship their order on Monday, they get it Tuesday and send payment, which I receive Wednesday. We’ve done this many times.
Costs via UPS and FedEx are not only much higher, but UPS no longer delivers next day in state. Worse, FedEx is a different breed altogether. Someone had better be right there when the shipment arrives,or you get a note that the driver will return, tomorrow. I made the mistake of walking around to the sided of their building to an open overhead door and a bunch of drivers after no one came to the customer counter up front, for many long minutes. I had the deliver- tomorrow tag, but the FedEx employees jumped all over my case and threatened me with trespassing for being in that area. Screw FedEx. They’ve missed a lot of my business over the years because of that incident. I will not buy from vendors who ship exclusively FedEx.
I think the best mail office is probably Germany. International to Spain, Portugal or RSA requires insurance or they lose it. International to Italy is different and requires insurance to jump the queue, a huge pile comprising many tons of mail handled on a Last In First Out basis. South America is haphazard, North America is a game of chance. I think the USA comes down to one button press when it enters the system, if they get it right it is delivered in reasonable time, if they get it wrong it can go wildly astray. They rarely lose anything but it can be dismally slow, I thought they had lost a consignment of electric motors sent to me in England but it eventually arrived via the British Virgin Islands, real Willis territory. Posting to the USA is more expensive than most other places on the planet.
Living in a small town in Oregon, I have to add a day on top of that for USPS. But Netflix frequently delivers a disc overnight.
Since this post is not really about AGW, I thought I make a comment about AGW not related to this post. AGW reminds me of a quote:
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”― Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time
I suspect we are full on into the “racket” phase.
I’ve ordered parts several times from a well-known electronics seller in US (stereo, hifi, that sort of thing) and while US residents get free postage if they spend USD98 or more, foreign customers must spend USD50 as a minimum, and then recoil in horror when they go to the cart and see the shipping cost. Depending on what one buys (hifi speaker drivers can be heavy) the freight can be more that the item cost. My very first order didn’t contain and speaker drivers, it was tape and glue and odds and sods. The seller put a relatively small order in a large box and filled the rest with paper, the freight cost was about the same at the order cost- and it took over 3 weeks to arrive. Subsequent orders were no faster, and I kept getting tracking numbers which told me “my” parcel had been delivered already to St Louis or whatever- so USPS reissues tracking numbers while they’re still “fresh”.
The Oz postal service is light-years ahead of USPS.
Wasn’t it President O who said (when telling us why the US Government should “fix” healthcare);
“UPS and Fed Ex are doing fine, it’s the Post Office that is always having problems”.
I recently placed an order (last Monday Evening about 9 pm Eastern) with free 2-3 day shipping for a ~30 lb shelf setup. UPS had it from the warehouse in CA it to my door (near Lake Ontario / Rochester NY) Thursday afternoon. It would have been here Wednesday, but we had 20 inches of Global Warming all over the roads and they “shut em-down”.
Cheers, Kevin.