Package Delivery

[PADemD]

Just got off the phone with UPS Customer Service.

My package went from the Pittston, PA Distribution Center to the Bethlehem, PA Distribution Center to the Horsham, PA Distribution Center and back to the Bethlehem, PA Distribution Center for delivery.

That's an extra unnecessary 75.5 shipping miles and four days. I could have had my package in one day.

Who devises these systems?

[ret5hd]

1. I can beat that:

I once had a package from New Jersey to Texas travel to Hawaii.

My packages get better vacations than I do.

[sarge43]

5. DUzy

[ProdigalJunkMail]

13. hell, my luggage has done better than that!

Philly to Atlanta... bags went to Alaska...

sP

[Tom_Foolery]

2. I had a package come from Indianapolis to my town in Kentucky...

It arrived on a Friday and sat at the UPS depot all weekend. Come Monday morning, it headed south, winding up in Orlando on Tuesday. It started its trek back north on Wednesday, going through Georgia and Tennessee, arriving in Louisville on Thursday. It arrived back in my town Friday morning. I thought, Oh my god, here we go again. I received it on Monday. UPS had no explanation for the long trip.

[frogmarch]

3. My USPS does that.

Every bit of mail sent from my local post office here in northwestern Nebraska goes all the way to eastern Nebraska for sorting, even though our post office here is fully staffed. If I mail a birthday card to a neighbor, it'll take at least two days for it to be delivered.

The post office employees think it's stupid too.

[A HERETIC I AM]

8. There are a couple reasons for this.

Last edited Tue May 26, 2015, 04:56 PM - Edit history (2)

(I work for a USPS Contractor, so I have a little knowledge here, and I mean little, as there is still plenty to learn)

The USPS had for years, from what I understand, 2 main sorting facilities;

The BMC (Bulk Mail Center) and
The P&DC (Processing and Distribution Center)

MOST of the BMC's are now called "NDC's" for "Network Distribution Center"

The primary difference is who "sorts for the street", in other words, which facility takes the mail destined for a specific zip code and sorts it into bins which go onboard your local delivery vehicle. NDC's sort for zipcodes, but not for the street. P&DC's do the final sort and either send it to your local PO where the trays come off the truck, ready to go right on the local delivery vehicle or, if your municipality has a P&DC of it's own, the street sort is done there.

The reason the mail you send goes all the way to Eastern Nebraska is because that is likely where the nearest NDC is.

As mail is picked up, be it from your mailbox at your driveway, the blue mailboxes around town or a business or other bulk mailer, the guy picking it up does none of the sorting at all, as one could expect. You could put a piece of mail in your mailbox going to the other side of town to pay your water bill along with a birthday card for your Aunt Millie in Boston. Those two pieces of mail have to be set out for movement on different trucks. Budget cutbacks as well as automatic sorters means that the primary sort does not happen at your local PO, but rather at the NDC on the other side of the state. The NDC is like an airline terminal, really. Scheduled departures and arrivals occur and the B'day card for your Aunt has a specific departure time (or perhaps several during the day) and the water bill has another. But even here, they are not sorted for the street, as a general rule (the exception that I have noticed is in pre-sorted mailings, where the sender does the presort before even giving it to the PO)

Now...not to get too confusing, or get ahead of myself.....

I can speak to a couple specific PO facilities I have dealt with - Gainesville, FL as well as the Jax, FL P&DC and the Jax NDC
For instance, a resident in Gainesville wants to mail something across town. That piece of mail will go to Jacksonville to the P&DC and be sorted for the street, then sent back to GVille for delivery. 140 mile round trip to move a piece of mail 5 miles! But there is efficiency in the madness because G-Ville does not (or didn't, more on that below) have the equipment to efficiently sort in the way Jacksonville does.

More; G-Ville was recently told that they were expanding the facility and getting new sorters in. According to what I learned talking to the guys on the dock, it is because of the increasing populations in that area of Florida - the Ocala area, Wildwood, etc. So that means there will be a lot fewer pieces moving up to Jax and then back. I have no idea if this is a trend nationwide, where mid-sized P&DC's take over more street sorting.

Hope that helps a little.

Again, I am not an employee of the United States Post Office. I work for a mail contractor, driving 18 wheelers between cities. I visit primarily NDC;s and P&DC's, and rarely but on occasion, a small town PO like Daytona or Waycross, GA, for instance.

[onethatcares]

10. in St Pete here

and we've found that mail sent to the address three blocks away goes to Tampa for sorting and a two day snooze than back to St. Pete to be delivered.

They did away with the sorting of mail here I think so we have two really nice postal buildings that haliburton or some other company will pick up for pennies on the dollar one of these days.

I luv the USPS. Best bang for the buck ever so don't get me mistaken, K?

[A HERETIC I AM]

11. No mistaking whatsoever and I take the critisicms I read here with a grain of salt!

I would make a small wager with you though.....

I bet if you were to send 10 letters on the same day to different addresses in the same zip in St. Pete, you might find some are delivered the next day and some take the two days or three you mention. LOL on "snooze"...trust me, it isn't snoozing!) It does depend on the class as well. 3rd class mail goes slower. Send it Priority and it's very quick. They ask us when we check in to the larger PO facilities if we have Priority on board. If so, "Dock # 1 please" ...that sort of thing.

It all depends on "the sort" and what time your mail hits the facility. If it's early enough and gets on an earlier truck to Tampa, it may get on an earlier truck back to St. Pete.

Just to clarify, your local Postal Carrier is taking it back to either the PO of your specific zip, or to the Main PO in St. Pete. Either way, as I said above and as you are obviously aware, (edit for clarity here mail for delivery near you goes on over to Tampa to be sorted for the street.

That PO P&DC in Tampa, BTW? Is on the airport property.

[NV Whino]

4. I love being able to track packages

It's so entertaining.

[PADemD]

6. It's so entertaining.

Not if you have a deadline to meet.

[NV Whino]

9. I forgot to add "and frustrating"

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

7. It's just part of that new math they started teaching me in the 60s

I live near the Cherry Hill Mall in NJ just outside Philly. I order often from a seller that routinely ships to me from a depot in Secaucus. They call their free shipping method DHL Global Mail. DHL ships the letter sized item to their center in Elkridge, MD. From there it's sent back to my local post office for delivery to me.

Elkridge, MD is 20 miles further from me than Secaucus, NJ and a truck would have to drive past my town and within 6 miles to make that trip. Somehow they need to charge to ship something 83 miles but they ship the same item 310 miles for free.



Oh, did I mention it takes a week.

[LiberalElite]

12. and here I thought it was bad when

a package I shipped FedEx to London, England from NYC (which has three airports and is closer) went to Indianapolis first.

[MicaelS]

14. Better than having a package re-routed through the NSA.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/29/report-nsa-intercepting-laptops-ordered-online-installing-spyware/

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/12/glenn-greenwald-nsa-tampers-us-internet-routers-snowden

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-nsa-uses-powerful-toolbox-in-effort-to-spy-on-global-networks-a-940969-3.html

[Skittles]

15. it's based on the economics of delivering a lot of packages, not just one

[progressoid]

16. I ordered something on ebay that never showed up and tracking showed it in limbo somewhere in CA

After two weeks, I got a refund and ordered a new one from someone else. The next day the first one mysteriously showed up in my mailbox. Yesterday the new one showed up.