Shipping Tracking

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It’s an anxious season. What with porch pirates being a thing and the holiday season near, I think it’s about time to rate shipping trackers.  Please, I am not rating the actual delivery persons—theirs is a difficult job, I know.  On the receiving end, there’s always an anxiety that an item left on the porch will be raptured before discovered by the person who ordered it, so I try to arrange my schedule to be home on delivery day, during delivery hours.  The post office (USPS) has always been a little suspect.  I’ve had “item delivered” messages from them only to find it wasn’t even out for delivery that day.  And don’t get me started about two local distribution centers that appear to have no idea what state they’re in, let alone what other towns might be nearby.  USPS isn’t near the top of my list.  With apologies for the spoiler, Amazon understand logistics.  I know many people who don’t like Amazon for various reasons, but say what you will, they generally know where your package is, in my experience.

There is a service on the bottom of the list, regarding trackers, but before I get there I need to say that these are shipping companies we’re discussing.  Their raison d’être is to move items from one place to another.  I also realize that the older companies that ship had to integrate computer tracking into already existing structures.  USPS was around centuries ago, and it’s understandable that integrating tech into the rather straightforward process of getting an item from A to B is a challenge.  I’ve worked for companies that have tried to integrate tech into pre-existing structures, and it’s always messy.  Still, it would seem that if your business is delivery and everything from GPS systems and advanced software make that more efficient, why wouldn’t you integrate it?

Which brings me to the bottom of my personal list.  I’m sorry UPS (not USPS), it’s you.  The tracking info is often virtually junk.  The number of times I’ve seen a package to be delivered that day only to have some half-hearted excuse, such as “Delayed” pop up on the timeline, with no explanation, followed a day or more later with a vague “we’ll get it to you when we can” message, hardly inspires confidence.  All the more’s the pity since UPS was the “United Parcel Service,” with the goal of being a package delivery service industry.  And it was founded more than a century ago.  You’d think that they might be able to scrape together a few dollars to hire some kind of systems architect to figure out where the software’s falling down on the job.  Of course, I should be charitable with the spirit of the season. It’s just that I’m anxious.  There are porch pirates in the neighborhood.

Finding Yourself

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Sometimes I look, fascinated.  At tracking info, that is.  I once ordered an item from Montreal, which is, I’m told, in the province of Quebec, Canada.  The estimated shipping time was five days.  It ended up being quite the tourist package.  Its first US port of call was Plattsburgh, New York, which makes sense.  The strange thing is the Canadian tracker didn’t include the states—just town names, all of them small, as if this were a covert operation.  From Plattsburgh it went to East Syracuse, because, well, who wouldn’t want to go to East Syracuse?  From there it leapt right over Pennsylvania, where I live, to Hodgkins, Illinois.  This is a town so small that you really have to be a fan of package vacations to find it.  From there it went to Maumee, Ohio.  It seemed to be heading in the right direction, in any case.  Maumee led to Middlebury Heights, still in Ohio.  Finally it reached Pennsylvania, in New Stanton, not terribly far from my childhood home.  Then Carlisle, about halfway through the state.  Finally to Easton, from which it reached me.  Surprisingly, on time.  

It’s gotta be around here somewhere…

Logistics baffle me.  I had it drilled into me as a child that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  Montreal is about 400 miles from here, pretty much straight north.  I wouldn’t venture to tell UPS (the carrier in this instance) how to do its job, but when you’re ordering something carbon neutral (that, of course, you can’t get close to home) it feels kind of excessive to have to stop in so many small towns only to skip the destination state by flying from New York to Illinois so you can drive it back to Pennsylvania.  Logistics people need jobs too, I guess.

Amazon has made many people ask why things can’t arrive more quickly.  The fact is, shipping companies have their own protocols.  It’s like when you have to fly south from a regional airport to get onto a flight north.  You have to reach a hub where they know how to direct your package.  And if your item requires sea freight, well, all bets are off.  There may be no tracking points between Shanghai and Los Angeles.  No matter how much some people may say they hate it, we live in a global society.  We rely on China, and Canada, and everywhere else, to make life go in these United States.  Even following your tracking information can, in that way, be an exercise in thoughtfulness as well as a learning experience. 

News Shipping

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There’s no question that the pandemic has disrupted shipping.  It didn’t help that Trump basically tried to shut down the entire postal system so he could try to steal the election (which he instead tried to take by force on Epiphany), but shipping services still haven’t quite recovered.  I can’t help but wonder if it’s all the “middlemen” who’ve gotten involved.  I still buy things from the internet and if they’re not coming from Amazon they give you tracking numbers, sometimes for companies I’ve never heard of.  No matter whether it’s UPS or OSM, it always comes to the same message when you type in that tracking number that’s just shy of pi in length.  The package is awaiting USPS pickup.  I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened in the past several months.

Limbo is an old religious concept that seems to have been revived.  Your package simply can’t be found.  You can try the Post Office, but since they haven’t picked it up yet they can’t tell where it is.  Or you can call the company involved.  They’ll tell you the Post Office has it.  So you go stirring the alphabet soup of shipping company names while your parcel’s MIA.  I wonder if what these other companies do is go to the loading dock of the seller, get the package, then drop it off at the PO on their way home.  That sounds like the business to get into.  Why say you’re a shipping company when you’re just going to let the beleaguered Post Office handle it?  Because someone will pay you to do it, obviously.

We recently had a package that took three weeks from its drop-ship to UPS to get to the Post Office and finally here.  I stopped into the local PO and asked about this strange partnership.  The woman at the counter told me, “It’s the slowest way to ship, that’s why companies use it.”  Slowest, and therefore least expensive.  Never mind what they charged you for the shipping and handling.  Handling will cost you, you know!  Meanwhile I’m thinking maybe I should start calling myself by my initials and hire out my services to drop things in the local mailbox.  As a corporation I’d have greater protection by law than I would as a guy in his own car.  And besides, if I ordered something myself I’d be able to pick it up directly without having to wait for the tracking number to catch up.