Help with problems with shipping...but not in the way you think...
11Hi Meh
I coach a youth STEM/robotics team which competes in the FIRST Lego League. As a part of the competition the team has to identify a problem related to theme and come up with a unique and innovative solution to that problem. This year’s theme is transporting cargo/goods. A majority of the team I coach is in their first year of competition and ages 10-11. They’re having trouble getting beyond, “Drones are cool! Let’s make something that will deliver packages by drone!”. Which sounds like fun but is more of a solution looking for a problem rather than the other way around.
I’m just a simple country aerospace engineer and my co-coach is a high school robotics teacher and parent. We’re having trouble redirecting the team members to even start thinking about other type of problems.
Which is where you all come in:
What are some problems you’ve encountered relating to shipping/transporting cargo?
Consider this permission to complain about SmartPost/Pitny Bowes and every other horrible shipping company who has ever sent your package on a round trip to Cleveland before finally getting it to you via Albuquerque.
What horrible packaging have you encountered?
If you happen to be involved in shipping things or receiving things which are shipped as something other than a consumer, I’d love to hear your stories of problems and frustrations you’ve encountered.
If you happen to work for Meh and you all are looking for a way to outreach in the local community possibly by giving a tour of your warehouse and talking about your shipping process with a group of well chaperoned kids, let me know. We’re in the North Fort Worth area and everyone loves a field trip! 
- 17 comments, 45 replies
- Comment
@gt0163c That sounds fun
Do drones have air lanes? I can anticipate drone collisions as they wander back and forth to Cleveland and around, hunting for an Albuquerque address.
(Do cargo drones ever go astray? Are cargo drones ever wont to run out out of fuel when gone astray?)
@phendrick These are important things to think about when talking about autonomous, or even remote controlled drones.
What happens when the drones become sentient?
@ybmuG Heh. As they say around here: “A low-flying drone is a skeet; a low-flying cargo drone is a skeet with a prize!” So a low-flying sentient drone would just be a bigger challenge.
@ybmuG Skynet. And we all know how that turns out.
@rockblossom @ybmuG
and around here it wouldn’t be long before there was an “official season” for hunting them!
I read about a company in China called J.D.com that already does a lot of drone deliveries to remote rural areas:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/23/how-e-commerce-is-transforming-rural-china
@Kyeh Thanks for the link! I’ll definitely check it out and share it with the team.
Not too long ago, Amazon decided to ship two brake rotors and a ceiling light fixture (with a glass lens) in the same box. Needless to say, the light was received as a puzzle.
On the other paw, I’ve had catshirtswoot ship out shirts with bags of Texas air before.
@narfcake Those are both excellent examples of problems I can pass on to the team. Thanks!
@gt0163c @narfcake Similar: Just received a pair of shoes ( in their normal shoebox) cushioned inside another box using a couple dozen air-packs.
Don’t think there’s much chance of damaging shoes in transit.
@compunaut @narfcake I just received a box of shoes shipped that way as well. I think you COULD damage a box of shoes in transit (challenge accepted?) but it would take some extra steps (skewering? fire? elephant stampeded through some mud pits?). In the course of normal shipping I think most shoes would be just fine without extra cushioning.
@compunaut @gt0163c @narfcake Or drop kicking the box. I’d imagine they’d pad it in case you return it so the box still looks new and can be resold as new.
What type of shipping? Domestic or international? Truckload, less than truck load, parcel, air freight, ocean freight, rail, local courier? How big of scope? I am sure I can give ya something
@tinamarie1974 Yes! The project is to identify a problem with transporting goods and proposing a unique and innovative solution to that problem. FIRST purposely leaves it wide open so that teams can go in any direction they want as long as they can make the case that it fits in with the theme (so transporting people doesn’t work…unless they’re slaves and then we get into all sorts of other issues).
@gt0163c ok let me think about it overnight. Something kids might find challenging
@gt0163c @tinamarie1974 I mean they DID used to transport people via UPS. Albeit small ones and rarely.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/surface-male/
@gt0163c @tinamarie1974 @unksol
In 1970, at 6 years old, I was put on a airplane and shipped down to Florida to visit with the grandparents! Is that really any different from being sent by mail as done in 1939?
@gt0163c @Lynnerizer @tinamarie1974 I believe all major airlines still offer unaccompanied minor service for what seems to me too be a minor fee for a 5+ year old. So no real change there.
Technically the difference is substantial. Airlines are a people transportation service and have to keep them alive. USPS was a parcel transportation service intended for packages not kids but for the period they let them get away with it it’s interesting if nothing else
@Lynnerizer @tinamarie1974 @unksol Yes, mailing kids used to be a thing and unaccompanied minors do get to fly. But our Challenge specifically is about transporting “Goods”. I’m not sure we want to spend time during our five minute oral presentation defending the idea that kids are goods.
@gt0163c @Lynnerizer @tinamarie1974 not a real suggestion obviously. And some of them are awful. Def not good(s). Then you get into the logistics of how Santa moves that much coal. And the environmental impact…
@gt0163c @tinamarie1974 @unksol
Very true!
@gt0163c @tinamarie1974 @unksol
Oh yes, definitely interesting, no doubt about that!
Many issues to consider:
2.b. Might reroutes be necessary due to bad weather, human worker absenteeism? [Robot rebellion?]
4.b. Do you bring some drones back on trucks (like when U-Hauls need to be redistributed)?
6.b. Will all drones have same carrying capacity or will you have selection depending on daily need? (But that would affect both initial purchase and maintenance issues.)
[All burning questions here.]
Sorry – thoughts kept spitting out while I am waiting on my microwave for supper.
@phendrick Definitely many things to consider if we end up going the drone route. I can see many conversations about drone lunch breaks…with kids the age of most of the team members snacks are life! I occasionally threaten them with “revokation of snack privileges” for certain rules infractions.
@phendrick
And if some of my (current) deliveries are any indication they then proceed to “spike” the package on your front porch…
My main complaint is accurate tracking and reporting of tracking. But that sounds super boring, especially for a kid.
I immediately thought of Mark Rober and his over-engineered package thief traps. But there’s also Domino’s delivery gimmicks for out of the box inspiration. 10yr olds still like pizza, right?
And there are probably plenty of issues with transporting cargo to/from/in Outer Space that 10yr olds could have fun with.
@Oneroundrobb
/youtube Mark Rober glitter bomb
@Oneroundrobb Amen to tracking issues, especially for lost packages delivered to wrong address even though correct address on label or loss in the warehouse. Are drone deliveries more accurate than humans? Tracking stolen packages.
@Oneroundrobb What about drones retrieving packages from homes/businesses to be sent by carrier? Or getting required signatures for delivered packages?
@DTominator @Oneroundrobb Excellent questions.
@DTominator @Oneroundrobb I’ve had my share of packages misrouted. If it’s not something I really need right away, it’s sometimes fun to make up little stories about my socks or whatever going on a nice little journey to see the country (because there’s little else I can do about it). But if it’s something I need or if it turns into a four week cross-country road trip which the one I took in college, it can get extremely frustrating.
@Oneroundrobb Mark Rober’s porch pirates and the Amazon robot delivery truck have been mentioned by the kids. I was especially excited about the possibility of getting to incorporate the Noid. I need to find my little smurf-sized Noid figure from back in the dark ages when I was a kid.
Here are some problems I can think of, mostly from the consumer/parcel side:
Smashed boxes
Missing packages that disappear in shipping facilities
The a-hole somewhere along the shipping line that ran a forklift through my air conditioner condenser unit and kept shipping it along anyway
Improper packing
Porch pirates/package security
Misrouted packages (Pitney Bowes special)
Efficiency of last mile (three different trucks come to my house because of three different services)
The old unreadable label gag
The imbalance of shipping containers between import and export
Storage/reuse of packing materials (Texas air is only easily storable before it’s filled, peanuts and bubble wrap are never easily stored)
Detecting internal damage on an otherwise good looking package before delivery
The ol’ driver toss delivery method (rough handing)
Weather damage (packages that get rained on)
Challenges of bagged parcels vs. boxes
Box sizes - having the appropriate size box without stocking too many kinds
Box sizes - determining the appropriate box size given the contents picked/dunnage requirements
Warehouse organization for optimum picking
Pick worker challenges (the Amazon problem - increased efficiency vs overworking staff)
Automating identification of mispicked orders/damaged orders before departure (does weight match what is expected?)
More precise estimates/communication of arrival times (day of delivery - like a 30 minute heads up or something)
@djslack Thanks! These are awesome and exactly the type of thing I was looking for. I’ll pass these on to the team. Also, I hope you got your air conditioning issue resolved quickly. Living in North Texas A/C is life this time of year.
PANS! GLANDS! CRAYONS! AWESOME!
@gt0163c thanks. It’s not my primary unit, so the fact that it was out of stock and a challenge to replace isn’t crucial.
You raised a good point, though. Whoever did that extra sucks for doing it in August and not caring, they could have really put someone in a bind.
@gt0163c also, I hope your team gets a Meh field trip! If you need an additional chaperone, let me know
I miss robotics! Not sure if we still have a team after the last year of no in school. Our kid joined after lego league age, tho. Just waking up, but will think later.
@mikibell There are likely teams in your area looking for additional coaches and mentors. You can still be involved! (Although sometimes you have to bite your tongue or sit on your hands because the kids have to do the work themselves. Although there’s nothing that says you can’t buy your own sets to build and play with on your own time.
)
My only “issue” is that due to my driveway being steep, gravel, curved, off a 2 lane that is uphill with no shoulder no way to drive a delivery truck down or back out. I just don’t really order heavy things cause I don’t want to be a dick to my delivery driver. They have a job to do. And in winter it could be dangerous to try and do that. I don’t order much in winter at all if I can’t have a safe path cleared/prefer to go pick it up but there are no pickup/hold at locations for some.
But I work from home. They all text/email me when it’s out for delivery. They probably have gps and route guidance. They probably know when I’m next on their route. I would be more than happy to go out and meet them and lug it in myself. And they immediately text AFTER it’s delivered when they scan it.
They don’t let you put “leave at end of drive” as a delivery option. For obvious reasons.
BUT. If they tracked and estimated based on route/payload/previous package in route delivered they could send you a text when they are ~30 minutes out. And it could let you reply with an option before they get there. So when they scan the package it tells them yup I’m here I know. you can shove it out the back and I’ll come get it. Or yes it’s signed for leave it at one of the registered location.
This is of course a rural issue and sort of niche cause most people expect it at their front door but it’s not hard to take that concept and apply it to other things. Could I have a package drop box at the end of my drive that locks and unlocks based on these notices. Could people with porch pirates? Yes it could be hacked but it only takes a minor deterrent to defeat someone who just wants to grab a box. So a “secured” drop box that automatically unlocks and locks in a window around existing or better tracking?
@unksol Thanks for the ideas. Those are great! And this reminds me of the situation my parents are in. They live on top of a ridge in the mountains of North Carolina. The road up to their place is one lane and it’s not easy for large trucks to navigate. My mom has become friends with the UPS driver in her area. She often tries to coordinate meeting him somewhere in town when she knows she has packages arriving so that he doesn’t have to drive up to the top of the ridge.
@gt0163c @unksol This reminded me of the saga of @Brainmist and the long-drawn-out mystery delivery: https://meh.com/forum/topics/whats-in-the-box
@brainmist @gt0163c @Kyeh my location is not anywhere nere that difficult just more standard rural and just not a good place to order 40 lb buckets of cat litter cause they were on sale on line lol. That’s different/don’t want to go up that road
I’m just in the "do I want to make my delivery person have a bad day? " Naw I don’t need that
. Vs aw hell up a mountain? Really?
@brainmist @gt0163c @Kyeh @unksol
Yeah, wasn’t that a trip!!
@gt0163c @Kyeh @Lynnerizer @unksol LOL, I still need to update that saga. It’s been a summer of craziness, after a spring of craziness, during the 18 months of craziness, on the heels of 4 years of craziness…
Honestly, everything started downhill when Prince died.
Entertainingly, accessing my place has become even trickier due to a partial bridge collapse and placing of giant cement barricades. If the aging storm sewer in front of my house finally collapses, I’ll be left being only able to circle from alley to a quarter block of street to alley.
REEEAAALALLLLLLLY need some infrastructure investment.
This has been mentioned in several threads over the years… the logistics of shipping items purchased at more than one time together. Examples of ship whatever I order once a week/month or even just on ‘thon days.
Potential problems and cost considerations-
Holding random inventory in an organized manner until ready to ship
As mentioned above packaging breakables or damage to purchases
More skill and training needed for employees. Handing a invoice out to fill and the items are all over the warehouse vs take one of these and put it in this box.
Order cancellation causing excess (especially after item was sold out) or the opposite can’t find/ sold out when time to fulfill
From my job- sticky labels placed directly over information I need on outside of the box. Looking at you UPS.
Large box, minimal tape with small items inside. Tape gapes open, starts pealing off
Heavier boxes crushing others or even sliding inside one with bad tape
Enough for the moment
Edit to add: hope it is somewhat understandable. It has been a long day.
@speediedelivery Thanks. Yes, it’s understandable. And you’ve brought up lots of different interesting aspects of shipping. I hadn’t thought about large box + small items + minimal tape issues.
@gt0163c I wish I could give you more than one star. This is one of the best threads we’ve had in a very long time.
Best of luck to you and your kids. They are very lucky to have you guiding them.
@Barney Thanks. This is my 10th year of coaching and it’s always an adventure.
Currently FedEx and USPS are tied for worst delivery service. It is my understanding that your 5+4 zip code is unique to one address only so how could a FedEx package bound for TN be delivered a month later in Washington state??? USPS has delivered a package and returned a package as unknown ON THE SAME DAY!!!
@dyounghbic the plus 4 narrows down to one side of the road and a small part of it. We now have an additional 2 digits to be one address.
USPS and UPS have scanners that are capable of generating a warning if it is too far from the address on the package. Not all scanners and some packages do not have the address linked. It can help if the person pays attention to the warning. I don’t know if other companies use this method or not.
@dyounghbic @speediedelivery I don’t think FedEx has this scanner/address system. Last month a package was delivered to the wrong address that was different than the label. I suspect the driver gave my package to this other site and scanned it as delivered. On record, it’s delivered to me, but I didn’t receive it. Their delivery message was the only way I knew something was wrong. The frustrating part was you can only go through their customer service phone number to get them to retrieve it and actually deliver it to the correct address. They had to wait and talk to the driver to figure out where it was left,
which took several weeks.
I just had an issue with a new “service” offering from an unnamed auto parts store. araT’s car was in the shop and I decided to work on mine because, “what could go wrong with THIS idea?”
Because elkcirP and araT were out with our only other vehicle and I needed pads and rotors I thought, THIS place does free same day delivery, and it’s Saturday, so I’ll have the weekend and I don’t need to worry about elkcirP’s availability. Genius, I know!
Except when it isn’t…
3:00 goes go by - well, just running a little late, no biggie.
Got busy doing other things.
Next thing I know, STILL not here and it’s almost 8:00, the guaranteed-by time.
And of course, the corporate number closes at 7:30…
So I call my local store (where the order was sitting, ready for pickup and now that elkcirP was home I could have gone myself, but it’s too late now, they’re closing in 10 min and I’m 20 away).
“Yeah, we’ve been having trouble with this new service. Door Dash can never seem to get someone to accept the delivery assignment. I’ve called multiple times today for deliveries and get nowhere.” Except the one person you never called was me, but whatever.
WHAT? You put your company’s reputation on the line with a subcontract to a delivery company that sub-subcontracts to people that have the ability to say “no” to a job? Brilliant!
My theory - they don’t want to take the jobs because people don’t expect to tip the car part delivery driver and Door Dash drivers expect tips.
Sorry - still a little peeved. Picked them up myself today and got it done, thankfully.
TL/DR - don’t promise what you can’t reliably deliver.
@ybmuG That’s an interesting (and frustrating) experience. I had never heard of using Door Dash to deliver something like car parts. I thought they just delivered food. That does seem like a business model that could use a lot of refinements.
@gt0163c If I had to guess, it won’t last long.
@ybmuG from what I understand the drivers can see the jobs, and can and do choose because of the tip that’s put in up front in addition to things like the locations involved and their proximity to them. If you order for food delivery, you can put that tip in. If the store orders brake pad delivery, of course they’re not putting a tip in.
The wage for the job goes up the longer it sits out, too, so they are incentivized to make you wait so they get a bigger fee for doing it.
Here’s an article that kind of explains it: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/doordasher-tipping-delivery-time-tiktok/
@djslack interesting article and it totally explains the problem they are having. Shame on both companies for not anticipating. There isn’t even a place to enter a tip on the order, even if i wanted to. And no indication that delivery is from Door Dash, though they do say “delivery partner”.
I don’t blame the drivers for not taking a no-tip job, nor the parts store employees. But the “executive” schmucks who thought this was a good idea and didn’t have the good sense to ask simple questions, like "will drivers who are used to tips for $20-50 food orders that weigh maybe 5#, deliver $200 car parts orders that weigh over 50# for free? I think we have our answer.
And what the heck kind of model creates incentives for letting food sit LONGER? I get that the longer it sits, the more urgent it becomes (and in some sense more valued), but i think you have to take a customer value perspective, where value decreases over time. Pay extra for getting it there fastest. They are getting exactly what they designed.
@ybmuG all these places that partnered with door dash to say “we deliver” now are distorting the truth just a bit. “We deliver” indicates that we have someone we pay to take our stuff and bring it to you. Technically, I guess they do, but really “we participate in a marketplace where maybe someone is willing to take a few bucks to come get this stuff and bring it to you” is a more accurate descriptor. “We deliver” implies that the service is included, when really it’s a separate service either passed on through service charges or hidden in your cost (well, if it were included, it would also be hidden in your cost, but it’s a first party and not a third party).
Third party means that all anyone needs to do is point a finger somewhere else whenever anything goes wrong. No wonder the suits think it’s a great idea.
While RFID tags are currently used for inventory control in stores and when things are on pallets when shipping to count what goes out the door without having to scan each box, they could have a use in mailing packages too.
While currently they don’t have a long distance for the signal to be picked up, I have read that there are devices out there (need a van to fit them in but that will change eventually) that can pick up the signals from things in your house just when driving down the street. I can just imagine thieves of the future driving down the street seeing if there is anything in your house they want to steal based on the RFID tags put inside merchandise.
While lots of mail packages have tracking numbers on them that get scanned, there might be a way that RFID tags would be more accurate. For example there are some companies that have those on ID’s that you have to wear and they track you at work to see where you go and how long you hang out in, for example, the bathroom.
I think RFID tags can hold more information than the bars for tracking numbers. There might be a way to use them to find lost and stolen packages if you had a sensitive enough devise to pick up the signal.
Certainly because it can be passive rather than you have to scan it, one could know when it was taken off the mail truck and where the delivery person went with it since truck and the person could wear a “receiver” (my knowledge of technical language connected with this is limited). Thus one less place for an error (scan too soon, forget to scan at all, tracking at all times, not just when by a scanner…) and a more complete record of where something has been.
Sitting in Pittney Butthead scanners in the warehouse could pick up the signals of everything in there and a computer program could flag what has sat there for weeks on end and notify a human. They could also be rigged, by whatever computer program runs this, that if they are put in the wrong truck it causes the scanner to go off to notify someone that this package does not need to go from Dallas to San Diego on its way to Rockland, Maine.
Doing this would require enhanced receivers to pick up the RFID signals, computer programs that did what you needed to have done to record what is going on with something, and receivers built into the mail trucks, something the mail carrier wears… Having an RFID on the house/mailbox that the receiver the carrier holds could buzz and notify the carrier if they are delivering to the wrong address (a problem around here).
I had thought about this earlier with "touch and go credit card theft) and whatever those chips are made of. A small receiver in a purse or bag that brushes your wallet could steal that information. This would sort of be using that on a bigger scale for better real time tracking (so easier to find when things go astray because while they could be hacked, at least the bread crumbs wouldn’t need to be consciously/deliberately dropped to follow the path, having fewer errors…
Been thinking about this for a while but what do I know. I’m not an engineer or IT person. I was just thinking of the grand plan solving the problem of 'where the hell did my package go and why the hell can’t someone find it". Someone else’s problem to invent the nitty gritty.
My example of my most recent problem. Last May I got lucky with a nice fleece jacket for $8 and free shipping (boy did they lose money). It was dropped off at the post office, the tracking number didn’t show anything. It showed up early this month. Tracking info (this was USPS) still showed nothing.
This one is probably Amazon specific, but if a site lets you pick a delivery date, it’s not “great news” that your order is being delivered early. If next day delivery is available, but I specifically choose a later date, don’t send someone out to my house on Sunday.