taking forever to ship an item

[KellyHabersham]

To make it short, a friend had recommended a health food supplement to me, this particular item is something which stores in my area do not carry, so I had to order it online. I placed the order on October 19, FedEx was initially supposed to deliver the item by October 27, and I have still not received it. (latest update is it's supposed to arrive on November 3.)

According to the tracking number, FedEx apparently sent this package to Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and back to New Mexico......before sending it to Arizona. And this is something which I just do NOT see the purpose of.....it's not efficient, and very frustrating as a customer.

[HYHYBT]

Something I ordered not long ago did something similar: tracking showed it passing through a couple other countries between China and Alaska, then retracing its steps almost back to origin before starting forward again.

[Dreamstalker]

When I was in college in NM, I sold something to a buyer in VA. Priority Mail should have taken 3-4 days, tops.

Took over a week, and the shipment backtracked twice (I forget the exact route, but near the 'end' of the trip it wound up sitting in WA for two days). Buyer was as amused about the thing as I was, and we were both trying to figure out what happened to have it take that route.

[Aragarthiel]

When I moved from Arizona to Georgia, I accidentally left my flute behind at a relative's house. He shipped it to me, expected it to take a week. Well, first it had to go to Alaska, then California, then Wisconsin, then New Mexico, with a few minor stops along the way, but it FINALLY it made its way to me. It took so long (I can't remember the exact time but it was at least a couple of months), my grandpa just went and ordered me another flute off the internet (I was in band class so I kinda needed it). That one arrived within three days.

[wolfie]

I can understand being routed via Tennessee even if that's not the shortest path, but these tours of the U.S. are absolutely nuts.

[Dreamstalker]

Agreed. Especially for something that was in my case intended to take the fastest possible route (First Class would have been faster, getting a refund for the mailing cost was like pulling teeth and I think I had to threaten to get the media involved). Dad likes to say that there's a Bermuda Triangle of sorts for mail somewhere in or around NM; he's had some mail mishaps as well. Usually involving a package getting stranded nowhere near either the origin or destination and only when there's an inquiry into the tracking does it get shaken loose.

[wolfie]

Incidentally, there's a reason I specified Tennessee as a valid waypoint on a routing even where it's not on the shortest path (e.g. Bangor WA to Bangor ME). Let's see who can guess why that shipment might legitimately pass through Tennessee, even though both the origin and destination are Northern (in fact, they actually border on Canada) states. Routing via Georgia or Kentucky would NOT be legitimate in this case.

[Dreamstalker]

FedEx HQ and major airline hub? A good percentage of the stuff I buy online originates from one or another warehouse in TN.

[wolfie]

You got it. Fedex hub is in Memphis TN - ALL next-day air packages within the continental U.S. go through the hub. While it wouldn't make sense to someone outside the shipping industry, it's more efficient to run a hub-and-spoke system than it is to send packages direct, since you don't need a whole network of transport to handle arbitrary point-to-point shipments, and the sorting system at "nodes" (e.g. Seattle) only needs to handle the shipments to areas served by that "node".

Pickup in the area around Seattle? Terminal sends it to the "node" at SeaTac, where it gets shipped to Memphis. Delivery in the area around Seattle? Node at SeaTac checks which terminal is the closest, and sends it there.

One brand of heavy trucks brags about how their main warehouse is in Memphis (can send out emergency shipments later than if it were located elsewhere, since stuff can be put on a truck to the FedEx hub rather than having to catch a plane TO Memphis). Of course, that doesn't help if the parts needed are out of stock continent-wide (as has happened in the past).

[s_stabeler]

actually, I can understand it- for two reasons. 1) it makes the most efficient use of space on the truck (since all packages go to a central hub, then it's more likely for the truck to be completely full, thus reducing the number of trucks in use at any one time. Same for the trip to the terminal- since there is ONE route going to the terminal, it's likely there are less trucks going to the terminal than if they shipped directly from terminal to terminal
2) it means you can simplify your logistics- semi-trailers go between the terminals and hub, while delivery vans take the packages to actual addresses. Hence someone like Wolfie- who drives a semi-trailer, IIRC- would handle either hib-to-terminal traffic, or for smaller hubs, interhub traffic.(I say for smaller hubs because for larger hubs, it's more likely they will use freight trains or planes.)

[wolfie]

With a hub-and-spoke system, there is only ONE hub (place that EVERYTHING passes through). What I referred to as a "node" accumulates traffic from terminals (name comes from latin - a terminal is the "end of the line" - Vancouver's CN and CP stations were terminals, Toronto's Union Station is not) to send to the hub, and distributes shipments from the hub to the appropriate terminals. This setup works for FedEx air because planes are fast enough to deliver (for example) a Boston to NYC package overnight even though it passes through Memphis.

For comparison purposes, LTL ground freight is generally done on a web topology. The setup consists entirely of nodes (even though the companies refer to them as terminals). Each node does local pickup and delivery, and has linehauls to other nodes that are within a day's drive. A Boston to NYC package in this setup would be picked up by a straight truck and taken to the Boston node, then put on a linehaul to the NYC node (both cities are big enough to warrant having a node, and are within a day's drive of each other so they'd have only one linehaul). From there, a straight truck would do the local delivery.

For longer distances (e.g. Barrie ON to Bellingham WA), a shipment would pass through multiple nodes. Barrie would have a small node, sending out a straight truck to pick up the shipment, and send it on a linehaul to Toronto. In Toronto, it would be transferred to a truck doing the linehaul to Chicago. There's enough freight from Chicago to the West Coast to warrant direct (as in not being switched between trucks at intermediate nodes) linehaul to a node on the West Coast, most likely San Francisco (can take I80 from Chicago to San Fransisco, and SF is within a day's drive of virtually all the West Coast of the U.S., so it's a good place for a major West Coast node). From San Francisco, it would go on a northbound linehaul, probably to Seattle. Seattle would then send it to a node in Bellingham, where it would be put on a straight truck for local delivery.

Linehauls in an LTL setup are scheduled - the truck (or trucks if freight volume warrants more than one) will go from node "A" to node "B" at a specific time, whether it's fully loaded or half empty, and come back either the same day (minor node like Barrie that only has linehaul to one major node, and is close enough for a daily round trip), the next day (Toronto to Chicago), or several days later (Chicago to San Francisco). Multi-day linehauls usually have teams (2 drivers) so the truck can keep rolling rather than having to stop for mandatory rest breaks (one driver sleeps while the other is driving, then they swap).

Because of this reliance on nodes and linehauls, an LTL carrier can't handle freight that has either its origin or destination outside the pickup/delivery radius of a node. There is at least one case where a Canada-only LTL company and a U.S.-only LTL company work together for cross-border shipments, since neither company on its own would be able to do the whole journey, and therefore wouldn't be able to haul the freight.

Truckload freight is different since it's shipped direct. It's generally faster, since there's no delay caused by cross-docking at a node and waiting for the linehaul departure to the next node in the chain. Also, a shipment can be made to a city where the carrier has never delivered before, since there's no need for infrastructure at either the origin or destination city. In the Barrie to Bellingham example I gave, the truck would pick up in Barrie, pass through Toronto (no need to stop - only reason it passes through Toronto is that the major highway from Barrie to Bellingham passes through Toronto), take the 401/402 to the Blue Water Bridge, I69 to I96 to I84 (could take I84 directly, but this routing is a bit shorter and avoids the traffic snarls in Detroit), get onto I90 in the Chicago area (again, Chcago is a major transportation centre, so the major highways pass through it), and in Seattle get onto I5 northbound to Bellingham. Alternately they could take the Canadian route north from Barrie to the Trans-Canada Highway, and somewhere before Vancouver head southbound to Bellingham (less desirable because smaller roads, more likely to encounter heavy snow in winter on the northern route, and fewer truck services available). The big downside to truckload freight is the price - the customer is chartering the truck, so it would cost them the same to ship one carton as it would to ship a load that fills up the trailer (either volume or weight, whichever is reached first).