UPS’s $20B Problem: Operations Stuck in the 20th Century

https://www.wsj.com/articles/upss-20-billion-problem-operations-stuck-in-the-20th-century-1529072397

by dsr12 • 8 years ago

183 180 8 years ago

wsj.com

neonate• 8 years ago

http://archive.li/5YnbM

hotdog975• 8 years ago

Is there a list of which paywalled sites this awesome tool is capable of handling?

(Seems to be the same as archive.is)

21• 8 years ago

I think we should have a website or something where you put in a pay-walled URL, and it does whatever trick or redirects you where-ever you can see it.

Like SciHub basically.

sudouser2• 8 years ago

check outline.com

tofu8• 8 years ago

I can't access this link (ERR_NAME_RESOLUTION_FAILED). Anyone else having the same problem?

curiousgal2• 8 years ago

You're having DNS issues.

__float• 8 years ago

1.1.1.1 is giving SERVFAIL but 8.8.8.8 is handling it just fine.

tyfon• 8 years ago

I really want a setting on my HN account to filter out paywalled articles from the front page.

LateRuin2• 8 years ago

With any WSJ article, just open twitter and copy&paste the title. Any link to WSJ from twitter will get around the paywall -- even tweets from the official WSJ twitter account.

here ya go: https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1007786098859413504

ajnin• 8 years ago

For some reason this links redirects me to a blog article about a dispute between archive.is and their registrar. Replacing .li by .is works.

tehlike3• 8 years ago

This is an opportunity for Amazon to thrive into. It already has a lot of experience in a related industry, combining that with logistics is only logical.

whoisjuan• 8 years ago

Amazon will for sure go after this industry. There's no doubt about that. But it's hard to tell how fast or aggressive are they going to pursue this opportunity.

elvirs5• 8 years ago

amazon is doing a lot in this field already and unfortunately its not good news for regular folk who will be employed in that field. UPS offers highest salaries and benefits to its unionized workers and drivers. FedEx is ok with most of its drivers working as independent'owner operator' drivers. Amazon hires staffing companies and locol third party fleet companies thus providing 0 benefits and job guarantees while paying lowest salaries in the industry. Not sure why richest man in the world Bezos thinks Amazon should be paying less than $13/hr while both Apple store employees make $20/hr and up

tehlike3• 8 years ago

On fedex, you are right about independent drivers - but they also contract to independent companies to do last mile deliveries and haul. I would think amazon would do the same as Fedex, which means these local companies would be inclined to switch to amazon if they get more business from them. Alternatively, these local companies would grow their business to handle both to de-risk their business.

chriselles2• 8 years ago

I believe there is a key difference between Amazon and Apple that is worth mentioning.

Amazon is largely a reseller(bar it’s in house developed products like Kindle/Alexa and store branded products) with far lower gross margins than Apple.

Apple has the highest retail gross sales(and associated high margins) in the world.

Many look to Apple/Google/Facebook as leaders in compensation, benefits, perks.

But they are the exceptional companies that have wide Warren Buffett “moats” to protect their high margins.

McDonalds and Amazon(distribution operations, not software dev)have far more in common in value proposition and business model in terms of margins/compensation than Apple and Amazon.

Just my 0.02c

curiousgal2• 8 years ago

It says right there that for UPS, domestic deliveries are a low margin market, so Amazon shouldn't face that many hurdles taking over.

Spooky233• 8 years ago

The problem is that they will never be able to reach the potential in the market. Many shippers would refuse to do business with a competitor, and hiring random kids in moms minivan to schlep boxes won’t retain B2B.

Seems strange for Amazon to enter a business with low margins and a low ceiling.

tehlike3• 8 years ago

Amazon is doing a very low margin business themselves. They already have their warehouses throughout the country, they can just start with going into delivering packages for their own business, and expand slowly into logistics for others.

kevin_thibedeau• 8 years ago

Amazon shipping doesn't have to grow into a dominant position. All it needs to be is a big enough threat that they can negotiate better rates with outside parties.

forapurpose2• 8 years ago

It [Amazon] already has a lot of experience in a related industry, combining that with logistics is only logical.

Amazon is a logistics company, first and foremost. From order entry to delivery, they use their logistics systems to deliver whatever it is that you want to buy, from physical goods to movies to third parties' products.

I once read a foreign policy expert talking about drug cartels and why they all seemed to do human trafficking too, and why a terrorist organization tried to use them. The author said that the cartels started with drugs, but they have evolved into logistics organizations which specialize in illegal goods and bypassing customs. They have the means to ship things confidentially and without customs, and they'll put whatever you want to ship into their system. The author's point of view was that Wal-mart and Amazon are the same, but with legal goods and lawful business practices.

petra2• 8 years ago

Amazon is already there. This article talked about sorting centers. Amazon has already got a few tens of those.

wuliwong• 8 years ago

It is interesting/surprising to me that there isn't the suggestion of auto-loading/unloading the trucks themselves. Is this one of those problems that seems pretty tractable from the outside looking in but it turns out there are some fundamental difficulties that aren't obvious at first but make it much more difficult than first imagined?

I could imagine the beds of the trailers being conveyer belts themselves that would "plug in" to the system at the sorting facility. From there the automation could take over. It would be something like training the robots to play a combination of Jenga and Tetris.

elcritch• 8 years ago

That's a pretty good idea! Though my inclination was to think of a truck that dispenses (most) packages to the driver via a external hatch. Small win but possibly save a lot of bending, searching, and lifting.

sudouser2• 8 years ago

exactly. some time ago saw prototypes of packages tetris-like organized by delivery order and other ideas

Eridrus• 8 years ago

UPS is negotiating with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to renew a five-year contract, which expires July 31. Representing 260,000 UPS drivers, sorters and other workers, the union wants UPS to hire more full-time workers to help handle the surge in packages. It has opposed technology such as autonomous vehicles and drones and is wary of projects that do work with fewer employees.
“The problem with technology is that it does ultimately streamline jobs,” says Sean O’Brien, a Teamsters leader in Boston. “It does eliminate jobs. And once they’re replaced, it’s pretty tough to get them back.”

jstarfish• 8 years ago

It will be a sad day for a lot of people when UPS moves to automation.

Theyre one of the only companies left that still supports the 20th-century idioms of corporate loyalty-- with only a high school degree, you can start as a truck sorter and work your way up to a vaunted driver or stationmaster position over the course of your career.

Robots might improve a few things though, like safety. If they can not only account for spatial positioning but also weight, automatons might ensure trucks arent over- or unevenly-loaded.

qrbLPHiKpiux• 8 years ago

Everything’s automatable, to a point. Sometimes, in this case, it wouldn’t be worth it. Machines could not handle what a human can do

tomcam• 8 years ago

Can someone explain why this post was downvoted?

forapurpose2• 8 years ago

conveyer belts

Speaking awhile ago with an expert in this kind of automation, I was told that conveyor belts are much less reliable than I imagined.

Your idea also could be implemented using different tech: Think of the Amazon warehouse bots that lift entire shelving units and bring them to the people who pick items from them. Preloaded racks could be delivered into their places on the truck.

Is this one of those problems ... ?

It also could be one of those problems that isn't a bottleneck and isn't worth automating.

Merad2• 8 years ago

Worked at UPS from ‘03 - ‘05. I can tell by the labels and codes on the packages I get that not much has changed since then. Didn’t know anything about programming at the time, but I still spent plenty of shifts daydreaming about how the job could be automated or at least done by trained monkeys. 15 years later I can look back and pretty confidently say that it’s a much more difficult problem than I thought at the time.

Loading semis is basically 3D Tetris where you have to consider not only shape (boxes, tubes, cylinders, and everything in between) and size (fits in the palm of your hand up to 2- 3m long), but weight (basically 0-75 kg) and rigidity. Humans pretty easily develop and intuition for these things. I certainly unloaded plenty of semis that were for all intents packed to capacity. In theory you could probably have some kind of fully integrated system that let you know ahead of time the details of every package so you could model the entire load and figure out how to fit it... but doing what humans do loading on the fly would be damned hard.

Loading package cars (the brown delivery trucks) drops the need to maximize volume carried and adds constraints about the order and location of packages so the driver can find them. Again though, it’s a fairly loose system. In theory the load is pretty well distributed across the truck’s numbered shelves by the planning system... except all the days that it isn’t. A loader ends up making a lot of on the fly calls to overflow shelves and rearrange things so they fit on the truck and the driver has a reasonable chance to find them.

tl;dr - Anything is possible, but automating that part of the process is an enormous challenge IMO.

jacques_chester2• 8 years ago

Formally, this is the bin-packing problem, which is NP-hard. There are lots of heuristic and approximate methods for coming up with configurations, but hitting an optimal configuration is unlikely to be done in short order.

I imagine load distribution, box fullness, rigidity etc can be included as dimensions to optimise. It'd be necessary, really, but doesn't make things any easier.

This is, however, what I believe Amazon are trying to achieve. As you point out, they have the advantage of knowing in advance what the different items being packaged are. They can presumably optimise within a single box, over a single order and across multiple orders and shipments. At their scale it would make sense to devote a large amount of compute to squeezing a few percent extra out of each cargo flight and truck delivery.

elvirs5• 8 years ago

Conveyor belts are designed carry packages, trucks carry pallets with 20-80 packages on them. Packages are loaded and unloaded onto transfer trucks in pallets. Conveyor belt will be useless in a truck bed. They could do one of those floors that cargo airplanes have where entire floor is tons of balls that enables you to slide anything across the area but then again special flat bottom pallets would be needed and those metal balls will make truck a lot heavier.

jessaustin• 8 years ago

Non-UPS trucks the same size as UPS's carry much heavier loads. If the balls made sense in other respects, their weight would be much less of an issue for the truck than for an airplane.

technofiend• 8 years ago

It is interesting/surprising to me that there isn't the suggestion of auto-loading/unloading the trucks themselves.

Surely UPS has already solved the logistics planning of putting the right packages with the right drivers, so what's left is prestaging the next truck load for a bot to pick and shift as soon as the truck returns. Although you could argue this means fewer jobs loading it could also potentially mean more jobs driving and frankly if a bot is doing the loading potentially less package damage from careless handling.

russdpale4• 8 years ago

The loading of the trucks requires much more dexterity than a machine would be able to deliver. Also the packages themselves would be difficult for a machine as you get these huge pieces that come down the belt weighing 150 pounds and the weight isn't evenly distributed at all. In these cases we have to stop the belt and two loaders load the item quickly, and the belt is restarted. What happens when a package comes down a slide and busts open and gets over everything? This actually happens quite a bit.. one time a goats head came out of the package and blood went everywhere. Or better yet, what happens when a package accidentally has two labels instructing the package to go to two different trucks, perhaps even two separate parts of the facility? We call this a double label and it usually requires a human to sort it out.

There is a lot of idiosyncrasies like this with many of UPS' jobs. Automation will come not to take the paycheck from the low wage worker, but rather from the high wage worker such as driver dispatching, human resources, etc. Those people won't be fired though, most will be reassigned to over see some drivers I would imagine. That is a tough job and those people need all the help they can get.

jononor• 8 years ago

The system needs to know its limitations and divert packages that cannot be handled automatically to manual handling.

It is too complicated to design a system that handles 100% of cases, better aim for like 90% with well integrated fallback for the edgecases.

jcims2• 8 years ago

Spent about a year loading and unloading at the Trabue UPS hub in Columbus back in the 90's. Everything you say is true. Unfucking the belt is something that is likely to be strictly a human endeavor for the next 20+ years.

There's no way automate it with the current hub architecture and today's technology. You'd literally have to have a stadium-sized package 'cache' where all package could be unloaded to, some machine vision doohickey to characterize every package, then have a solver identify the idealized load configuration, then picker bots go out and start streaming packages in order so that some high end robot could load the trailer with 90+ percent packing efficiency (which i believe we achieved as loaders getting paid $8/hr).

Then you'd still have to leave the last 8' of trailer space to handle the goats heads and exhaust pipes and all the other crazy shit that people just slap a label on and make someone else's problem. Maybe you could find a way to use air bladders or some kind of encapsulating foam to handle that, but mostly you'd just have to have a floater running from trailer to trailer to load that stuff.

(internet fist bump btw)

petra2• 8 years ago

Some are working on truck loading/unloading, like this company:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS0Rcgh9-Qw

It's probably just a matter of time.

liqu0rice• 8 years ago

The loading of a UPS semi might not look like this - at all... In addition to the criteria already mentioned by your parent-post, that need to be considered while loading, stability of the load is another important factor. The system in the video just stacks same-sized packages on top of each other, which is not the best approach. The reality is much more complicated as this. You might also be surprised, that the loading-speed shown is not that much faster than a human can do it.

pdfernhout• 8 years ago

Public Logistics Network suggested by Professor Michael Kay: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~kay/pln/ "A public logistics network is proposed as an alternative to private logistics networks for the ground transport of parcels. Using the analogy between the packages transported in the network and the packets transmitted through the Internet, a package in a public logistics network could, for example, be sent from a retail store and then routed through a sequence of public distribution centers (DCs) located throughout the metropolitan area and then delivered to a customer’s home in a matter of hours, making a car trip to the store to get the package unnecessary. The DCs in the network, functioning like the routers in the Internet, could also be located at major highway interchanges for longer distance transport."

One aspect of it is powered platforms that move boxes around without human intervention: "Modular storage design: In order to be cost-effective, the loading/unloading, sortation, and storage activities at each DC in the public logistics network must be highly automated since each load might visit a dozen or more DCs while it’s in transit, likely traveling on a different truck between each DC. Since existing automation technologies do not provide the flexibility needed to allow any size load to move to any location at anytime, a new DC design has been developed that would allow packages of varying size to be automatically unloaded at a DC, sorted, stored, and then loaded onto an outbound truck. Such a design would result in diseconomies of scale because it is cheaper to ship a single package compared to a larger consolidated load. Integral to the design is use of arrays of small square modules with orthogonal pop-up powered wheels."

toast02• 8 years ago

I worked loading and unloading at a FedEx ground sorting facility for a couple weeks 15 years ago; some of the trailers had rollers down the middle to speed loading and unloading. For the others we had rollers to put into the truck. But you wouldn't want the whole bed to be a conveyor, the sorting really needs one package at a time in the line, otherwise it's hard to scan and direct packages, and packages will get jammed at the turns.

elvirs5• 8 years ago

the article talks about UPS as an old outdated and lagging behind its main competitor FedEx while in my experience as a regular shipper I have to say UPS is a lot more reliable with its delivery schedule and serving its shipper customers needs.

pests2• 8 years ago

I'm drawing a blank to which company but this reminds me of when a huge worldwide shipping company was hit with WannaCry and did everything by paper.

The loss of efficiency was way less than they expected. They did have to spend weeks though fixing containers sent to the wrong location.

AmVess• 8 years ago

That would be Maersk.

elvirs5• 8 years ago

human error is a bitch. happens all the time and cant really blame people. happens to everyone unfortunately but costs a lot.

Spooky233• 8 years ago

The article seems to be missing a lot of details. FedEx ground has a more modern capital plant because they bought an awful carrier and just completed a multi billion dollar capital program to build out facilities.

It also doesn’t mention that Fedex operates two companies ground and express. Most of the B2B stuff is via FedEx express.

IMO the actual information here is that UPS approached the market based on their long term plan and maximized utilization of their capital investments. Now they’re looking to invest in modernization. The question is, was it smarter to stay the course, learn from Fedex’s experience and lock into tech at a lower price, or should they have scrambled?

Shelnutt2• 8 years ago

FedEx operates 3-4 shipping based companies. Freight [1] and Custom Critical [2] are seperate entities. Both of which operate independently.

The downside of fedex's seperate companies is there is a lack of logistical coordination at the national level. I.e. If they have a ground 28' trailer full at a smaller location and a separate 28' LTL Freight trailer, they will send two drivers instead of 1 long haul driver with a doubles configuration.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20080206004244/http://www.fedexf...

[2] https://about.van.fedex.com/our-story/company-structure/cust...

kevan• 8 years ago

Representing 260,000 UPS drivers, sorters and other workers, the union wants UPS to hire more full-time workers to help handle the surge in packages. It has opposed technology such as autonomous vehicles and drones and is wary of projects that do work with fewer employees.

This isn't tenable for the company. The union might be able to stall automation in UPS for a few years, but it'll end with UPS being unable to compete with its competitors. At that point UPS will have a lot more leverage in union negotiations because the alternative will be bankruptcy and everyone losing their jobs. Hopefully union leadership adopts a longer-term view before then.

gonzo41• 8 years ago

That type of automation will probably knock out 1 in 5 jobs, or more. The workforce will change. And those who don't move up the value chain (become robot technicians and programmers) will be pushed out. I totally sympathize with the union and understand it's motivations. When things like healthcare are linked to having a job in America, replacing people with machines is rough.

Spooky233• 8 years ago

The automation will impact the ground facility guys, who are low seniority chum whom a union will typically sacrifice.

My guess is that they overutilize seasonal/temp people and understaff later in the year from the unions pov.

icelancer3• 8 years ago

Even if it does eliminate 20% of jobs (that number is way too high), opposing it in the short-run won't solve anything permanently, as the GP said. Then when UPS is losing money and facing layoffs, the leverage will be massive. The union needs to adopt a long-term strategy or risk getting destroyed 5-10 years down the road.

xienze• 8 years ago

At that point UPS will have a lot more leverage in union negotiations because the alternative will be bankruptcy and everyone losing their jobs. Hopefully union leadership adopts a longer-term view before then.

Unfortunately that's not usually how it works out. See for example, Hostess a couple years back. The union thought management was bluffing about their imminent bankruptcy, turns out they weren't.

russdpale4• 8 years ago

It is tenable. We will be fine I think. The answer is to use the AI automation and humans in a symbiotic relationship where in the AI or the human would not be as effective without the other. Its easy to justify the workforce on the books if they are producing for example, 10x more than what they do now and despite the myth of unions, we actually have a ton of good employees who would jump at the chance to do some of this stuff.

The bottom line is that there are ways to make this work and be vastly profitable, but I think ultimately, the question is whether our management and union leaders will work to do that.

dagss• 8 years ago

If there was a 10x larger market for shipping then UPS and its competitors would have already taken it.

Some things actually are zero sum games. And we are a lot closer to that now than 50 years ago when there was so much more room for growth.

dmead6• 8 years ago

Or they could do the socially correct thing and not automate.

Or, all that automation is just vaporware outside of marketing demos and the unions will be fine.

imglorp• 8 years ago

Have you ever seen a modern factory?

whb072• 8 years ago

How are you writing this on the web?

brogrammernot2• 8 years ago

Why is it socially correct to not automate?

I’m genuinely curious to hear this point of view. I don’t believe unskilled labor (or minorly skilled labor) has a right to a job anymore than a very skilled laborer does.

There’s a reason why cement trucks were created when you could (and can) still mix cement by hand. It’s wildly inefficient at a certain project scale, and I hold the same view for other items.

I’d love to know why you feel it’s socially wrong to push forward automation.

brohee• 8 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QndP_PCRSw

If UPS doesn't deploy something like that, a competitor will...

JumpCrisscross• 8 years ago

At that point UPS will have a lot more leverage in union negotiations because the alternative will be bankruptcy and everyone losing their jobs

The history of companies with incalcitrant unions isn’t the unions getting crushed at the last minute. It’s everyone losing jobs because the company goes bust.

jjeaff2• 8 years ago

Not to mention that even if they did suddenly decide to cooperat, it will be far too late.

exabrial• 8 years ago

This is largely in part to the same reason New York's subways are stuck in the 20th century: Unions. While they serve a vital function to prevent labor abuse, nowadays they are abused to prevent innovation.

nhaehnle• 8 years ago

The interesting thing from a German perspective is that over here, unions seem to have a much more positive influence on business decisions. I wonder where the difference is coming from.

occamrazor• 8 years ago

In Germany union representatives regularly participate to management meetings. Moreover the labour union system is completely different: unions represent all workers, and in each company there are usually different unions.

DoofusOfDeath• 8 years ago

If some unions are a tool of organized crime, I would expect them to be a source of hard-to-explain inefficiency.

Aloha• 8 years ago

Unions are s small part of the problem at UPS - the smallest part arguably - and NYMTA, they're a bigger part of the problem, but not anywhere near all of it.

There is currently no technology that would allow UPS to fully automate, nor would even gain enough efficiencies that would repay the investments needed. The amusing thing to me is - now is probably the right time to fully automate sorting, the technology is much more mature and will likely have a longer lifetime before replacement, than the technology FedEx just installed.

NYMTA, could fully automate - but as a cost greater than building new subways from scratch - the largest issue NYMTA has is a lack of local control, a lack of funding (from Albany), and the tact that if the subways - any of them - shut down for any amount of time, the city devolves to gridlock.

Complicating factors for MTA are, outright corruption, an indifferent management, regulation that makes construction difficult, and a top down safety culture - that prioritizes eliminating the /appearance/ of risk, over reducing realistic risk.

jmharvey• 8 years ago

The thing I find curious about UPS/Fedex operations is that they're still oriented around a "make deliveries during business hours" model that made sense decades ago when businesses were overnighting documents to each other, but makes less sense when traffic is largely goods ordered online and shipped to residences. To an outsider, it seems like door tags/missed deliveries/redeliveries must be inefficient, expensive, and almost entirely predictable for the carrier, while also being a major driver of customer pain.

heartbreak• 8 years ago

In my mid-Atlantic market, UPS Ground does residential deliveries exclusively between 5-8pm and business deliveries during normal business hours.

DrJokepu• 8 years ago

As a business owner I use UPS quite a bit to get things delivered to clients etc (during business hours) and I don't think twice about paying $70 for next day air delivery. I doubt online stores pay anything like that.

spenczar5• 8 years ago

I wonder whether UPS’s business really is mostly residential. The business side is invisible to me - it could be huge, I don’t know. Does anyone have data?

the-dude• 8 years ago

It is huge. I consider UPS business orientation a plus : I know when they show up. Tracking is the best of the bunch.

For example : Farnell ships with UPS. Farnell is a mostly B2B electronic components distributor.

EU experience from good to bad : UPS, Fedex, DPD, TNT and then DHL which is the worst from a receivers perspective.

edit: I should add, running a business from a residential location.

ac29• 8 years ago

I couldn't find an exact number, but their 2017 10-K has the statement "Business-to-consumer shipments [represented] more than 50% of total U.S. Domestic Package volume".

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9N...

rtkwe2• 8 years ago

They have extended their delivery hours already. Most of my UPS packages come 7pm or later these days some even around 9pm even outside rush times like Christmas. There's just not enough hours available for them to do all residential deliveries during the 6/7-9/10 window when they could reasonably assume that people with 9-5 jobs would be home.

Also it's become exceedingly rare for UPS or Fedex to leave me a slip these days the only missed delivery because of signature requirements for me have been USPS attempting to deliver international packages, can't actually remember the last time UPS or Fedex has delivered a package requiring a signature.

konschubert3• 8 years ago

Also it's become exceedingly rare for UPS or Fedex to leave me a slip these days

So they just leave it in the hallway in front of the apartment door?

quasse• 8 years ago

While I agree with you about the inconvenience of most residential shipping services, I think people not interacting directly with the industry tend to forget how absolutely huge the business-to-business market still is for UPS. I expect the margins are quite a bit larger for them there as well.

Working in the engineering field, people send things at shipping prices of $50-$200 plus per package on the daily. The only thing that matters is that it arrives where it's needed fast. I can't say for sure, but I would expect that UPS is still more inclined to cater to the relatively price insensitive business customer over the Amazon Prime residential customer.

icelancer3• 8 years ago

> While I agree with you about the inconvenience of most residential shipping services, I think people not interacting directly with the industry tend to forget how absolutely huge the business-to-business market still is for UPS. I expect the margins are quite a bit larger for them there as well.

Definitely. The consumer side is less relevant compared to the business side.

We spend tons of money on UPS' insurance products that they must kill us on, but we have no choice, as we send $10k+ packages regularly. USPS' insurance is a complete joke but UPS/FedEx honor theirs pretty regularly, even if there are some hoops to jump.

greggman• 8 years ago

Proof it can be done better, Japan.

It's common to be able to choose the day and the delivery time. 8am-12pm, 2pm-4pm, 4pm-6pm, 6pm-8pm, 7pm-9pm and I've never had them be 1 minute outside their designated schedule.

And, prices are cheap. Price to send a large package from Tokyo to Osaka (think SF to LA) (larger than the USPS would even allow), $20

richardw• 8 years ago

Googled, am surprised:

"FedEx recently stated that only about 3% of its revenues are derived from Amazon, while an estimated 7% of UPS’s revenues come from Amazon."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/11/22/wh...

nostromo• 8 years ago

Imagine the efficiency gain of delivering packages in the middle of the night, when trucks can fly down the interstate with zero traffic.

konschubert3• 8 years ago

And the noise and the poor staff who now has to work night shifts.

SomewhatLikely• 8 years ago

People tend to get suspicious of nighttime activities in the suburbs and exurbs. I'm not sure that would go over too well. But deliveries to lockers would make sense.

asddddd• 8 years ago

Delivering residentials after dark is an absolute nightmare. Is that house on the corner 5647 or 5643? Is there one house or two houses down the gravel driveway? Hope you've been driving the route for 30 years and have your daily 200-stop route memorized, because it can be a pain to figure out even in broad daylight.

Merad2• 8 years ago

Bear in mind that UPS’ (and I’m sure Fedex too) entire operation is in motion 24/7. The brown trucks return to base full of packages, most of which need to be pushed upstream to regional sort facilities to go to other areas. Those regional facilities and everything larger are basically working nonstop IIRC.

“Continuously delivery” would probably be difficult. Your typical truck will head out with 6-800 packages to be delivered in a 8-9 hour day, and they don’t all come in at once. Maybe you could send out trucks more often during the day, with fewer packages to be delivered over a larger area, but I’m not sure it would be that beneficial. You’d increase fuel and maintenance costs, plus you’d be paying your (fairly expensive) drivers to spend more time driving rather than delivering packages.

a3n• 8 years ago

FedEx makes it easy for consumers. They bought Kinkos some years ago.

When a package is coming via FedEx, IHOP on their website, no registration required, and rerouted to the most convenient Kinkos. I pick it up when I want.

When a package is coming via UPS, I weep.

woobar• 8 years ago

When a package is coming via UPS, I weep.

You can use Store Hold[1] at UPS Store (formerly known as Mail Boxes Etc). Wikipedia claims they have more locations than Fedex Office (~5000 vs 1900)

[1] https://www.ups.com/us/en/help-center/sri/store-hold.page

jeremy_wiebe• 8 years ago

I’ve taken to using shipping depots for amazon shipments. There’s a 7-Eleven just down my street that I can ship things too and pick them up at my convenience. It’s easier than missing the delivery guy and dealing with redelivery, or worse, going to the UPS centre and getting it.

Pxtl• 8 years ago

This. I have a post-office a 3 minute walk from my house, with long hours. The UPS drop-off is a pharmacy a 20-minute drive away that keep's bankers hours. If something ships to my house by UPS, I will get a paper notice that it's at the pharmacy and it appears there 2-4 business days later.

Why can't I just order it dropped at the post office for me?

laken• 8 years ago

Unfortunately UPS can’t do anything about that - only USPS is allowed to deliver to post offices and mailboxes. They have a federally mandated monopoly on those.

astura• 8 years ago

What makes you believe "traffic is largely goods ordered online and shipped to residences?" Business deliveries are still absolutely huge.

mrtksn5• 8 years ago

I always wonder, why unionised workers won't pursue investment in technology that will make their jobs obsolete rather than fighting a futile war against the technology?

If you're an organisation of hundreds of thousands of workers, you probably can afford to invest in startups that can replace the jobs of the people you're representing. What's better, you already have a relationship with the client and your members have the know-how of the tasks and the business that's about to get automated.

If the investments fail, you keep your jobs. If your investments succeed, you no longer need to work to make living.

sonnyblarney• 8 years ago

With shipping - there will be always be tons of manual work to do. It will just change in nature.

mrtksn5• 8 years ago

Yes but wouldn't be great for the workers if they had a stake in the company that makes the conveyor belt for example?

We all have seen the graphs showing that the efficiency in the businesses increased dramatically while the salaries stagnated.

Maybe they should pursue investment unions that are aiming to replace their jobs with technology so that they can take the rewards of the increased efficiency.

gboudrias• 8 years ago

In a way, you're suggesting a cynical though (arguably) realistic stance. Which is logical, but a hard sell in the very political world of unions. A lot of these people have an emotional attachment to their job, or at least the idea of having a job.

Edit: In other words, you can't put a price on purpose.

ddebernardy2• 8 years ago

A lot of those automations require capital, which only the business in question will be able to provide at a reasonable cost.

mrtksn5• 8 years ago

260K workers can provide the capital by investing a fraction of their salary.

A 4K a year on average per worker will provide 1 Billions $ a year to invest in technology to make UPS jobs obsolete.

There's no rule that one person or company should own all the machines that put people out of work, maybe it can be better for everyone if the machines are owned by a large number of private owners. Basically decentralised communism or if you want it to sound nicer, shared automation economy through crowdfunding.

gomox2• 8 years ago

The idea is interesting but intuitively I don't think the math works out. I understand the hedge angle, but done at large scale this type of investment -labor automation companies- is unlikely to yield very good returns (say, 10% yearly or so) and is therefore incapable of providing enough income for a worker to retire on (based on a plausible investment amount available to a unionized worker).

mrtksn5• 8 years ago

Good point, but the idea here is that if the workers invest in the inevitable future and turn automation into a passive income instead of total loss for them(as it will happen when their trade is robotised by someone else). They might as well invest in anything else however collectively investing in the business they understand and are part of could bring considerable advantages such as educated “bets” in the startups and structured job losses(as not everyone will lose their jobs to the automation at the same rate) and all the the benefits that come with scale as opposed to individual micro investments.

notananthem• 8 years ago

They need to standardize package sizes. USPS, UPS, everyone. I know this would be ridiculous, but what about essentially milkcrate-like containers of standard stackable sizes with fixed rates for residential bullshit. Residential shipping has to be the biggest fucking pain in the ass- I know I've done it. I moved via UPS one time, packaging tons of random 3' square boxes with shit unpadded, the delivery people actually taped them back closed with my stuff inside. You should never accept those. Basically, have a few sizes of really over-built injection molded milkcrates with honeycomb for impact protection, and customers bring a box of crap to the store and pick out their crate, put all their stuff in, set it on the conveyor with their name/payment/etc and it rolls up to the front. A machine inflates a tight plastic bladder which secures the material inside, closes it, charges you and spits out a receipt.

There shouldn't be customer service. If you need to pick up your package, scan your ID or slip or something. If you have an address problem, you use the computer to ensure you're shipping it to the right place. Declarations are handled, and an impact resistant box would probably do well for all the stupid assholes shipping batteries, liquids, dead animals etc.

I know this wouldn't work for a lot of reasons and people would just keep the boxes, but maybe you can keep them from being taken out of the store, like you pull your cardboard box out of it or something.

You get to fill a cardboard box that's barely taped shut and that HAS to fit in the plastic crate. You can't take the crate home.

Analemma_• 8 years ago

I know this wouldn't work for a lot of reasons and people would just keep the boxes,

Actually I think this could work if you offered some money for the empty crates, like with bottle deposits. You could keep the crates if you needed them, but you could also save them until you had a carload to take to the UPS Store and get some cash. If the fee were low enough, the shipping companies would still be saving money over buying zillions of cardboard boxes per year.

I'm not sure if the economics work out, but if we standardized and got USPS/UPS/FedEx/Amazon all on board, it could work.

whoopdedo• 8 years ago

I've often wondered why UPS doesn't pick up boxes for recycling. How many trucks are half-empty after making a round of deliveries?

pyromine• 8 years ago

The wasted space costs more than the additional labor to deal with irregular size boxes

maratd• 8 years ago

They need to standardize package sizes.

Both services already do this. They provide free boxes for you to use of standard sizes. So if you choose to ship in another dimension, you're bearing that cost. They incentivize you to use standard sizes.

richardfeynman• 8 years ago

I wonder if Amazon will buy them.

LateRuin2• 8 years ago

Why would Amazon want to inherit UPS's union and pension liabilities? Easier to just start from scratch with the latest tech and zero legacy costs.

mistrial9• 8 years ago

anecdotal background says -- pre-IPO the UPS company aggressively fired union employees and promoted low-power middle managers by the thousands, then got the IPO with a promise to expand to EU and Middle East, and then with loads of cash, blundered through execution with multiple public errors and mismanagement.

achow• 8 years ago

Non paywall link: https://outline.com/xD5B8c

amelius• 8 years ago

They should try to become Amazon, or they will be made obsolete by them.

The direction they should take is to bind third party sellers, and to set up a web retailing website.

yeukhon• 8 years ago

If you are not familiar with how big players like Fedex (or UPS) run their operations, go check out https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDctEAS0fw_zzOnWDJA7d...

ljw1001• 8 years ago

Can someone please label WSJ articles as "paywall" in the title?

UPS’s $20B Problem: Operations Stuck in the 20th Century

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