anyone else get mail on monday?

[StarTech]

Startech I understand about Fedex and what they drive sometimes. Sometimes I get deliveries with the normal Fedex trucks, sometimes they deliver using Budget trucks, I have even had a few deliveries that the driver was using their personal car.

Might be very well the case here too. It just that I rarely get any FedEx shipments. Most of mine are either UPS or USPS. UPS was running Budget vans back during Christmas here and even making Saturday deliveries.

I just wish UPS could get on a better schedule of deliveries. When I got a package with only stock items they show up early in the day but if it is a needed part for a customer they show right at closing time. It just like know when I am in a hurry. Anyway at they come on the day usually promised. So far in the last few years I had three package that took the scenic route. One went all the way back to CA before getting delivered a week late.

 

[bertsmobile1]

All transport companies use sub contractors , I used to use them and latter became one myself.
Generally a subbie will drive a plain white van because they will not be the wrong colour for that fleet.
Some will get the subbie to wear a company shirt / jacket so they look like a company driver.
At one time I worked for 3 different companies in the same week for a couple of months as different types of deliveries have different peak days when they have too many deliveries for the regular drivers.
Air freight runs use the most because planes are always being delayed and a regular run driver has time slots they have to make thus most can not wait for a plane that is better than 30 minutes late.
When I ran my own partnership, all of our vans were plain white so they did not stick out on the road as many times there would be better than $ 1,000,000 of freight in the back, all high fashion items very stealable & easy to dispose of.
We made our customers identify each of our new drivers and they got notified every time a new driver was hired or an old one left.
We extended this to most of the major pick up places so they would know the person , not the uniform .One of the most common types of thieft is for some one to walk in wearing a uniform, pick up the freight then vanish and because most customers are used to a uniform, very few notice the driver is not wearing their ID tag.
Remember the Heathrow gold robbery .
As for the late delivery that would be a person like me who if given 100 deliveries , makes all of them if humanly possible.
As distinct to the follow the PO&R drivers who return to the depot at the designated time regardless of what freight has not been delivered.
I did an overflow run one time & in the run was a cooler box of medications that had been in the system for 10 days because it was a difficult delivery that had to be made late but was in the middle of the run. Drugs can not be left unattended for obvious reasons and these were trash by the time I delivered them.
When I got back late with an empty van the depot manager tore strips off me because my data terminal HAD to be back by 4 pm so it could be entered into the system before the overnight freight started to pour in, So if I had not made the effort, that cooler would probably still be in the system .

My workshop is just outside the Sydney metropolitan deliver zone, but the postcode is in both the metropolitan & regional zones.
Most of the drivers now know me and regardless of weather they are a metro or regional driver, will drive over the bridge & make the delivery.
However their PDA's will not scan the freight because it knows that spot is out of area or the address is wrong.
The regular metro driver has a couple of addressed envelopes which he photographs then photographs a house on the city side of the bridge so he can over ride his PDA, scan in the goods for both myself & the 3 neighbours up the road & make the delivery, he is a driver like me who delivers all of his freight & is proud to do it .

However if a subbie is there, he gets to the river, drives over the bridge and sees the "Out of Area" warning so tosses a U-turn and take the freight back to the depot, It then goes to customer service. they check the address against the Post Office address index & it checks out so they toss the delivery back on the dock and the cycle repeats till some one twiggs that it is a regional delivery and sends it to the regional delivery depot.
This can take better than a month and happens about 3 or 4 times a year.

 

[iowaztr]

No USPS mail delivery on Monday but they did deliver a package (standard, free delivery from the seller) the day before on Sunday at 11:30am. It was a part I was waiting for to fix my snow blower. Too bad the notification that it was delivered at 11:30am didn't show up until 4:30pm. Could have fixed my snow blower that afternoon.

 

[Hammermechanicman]

Last week i had a package delivered by UPS. It was a battery backup UPS for a job at a church. It weighed 110lbs. When the truck pulled up 2 guys carried it to my door. It had a sticker on it "HEAVY 2 man lift" i asked jokingly if they sent 2 guys just for that one package and he said that was exactly why there were 2 of them.
A couple of months ago fedex delivered a shipment that included 2 14 foot long projection screens. It came in a LTL fedex semi. Driver was afraid to turn into my drive so he used a hand truck to make 3 trips from the road to my barn which is about 100 yards from the street. He said he didn't have to do it but he said it was the right thing to do.

 

[bertsmobile1]

No USPS mail delivery on Monday but they did deliver a package (standard, free delivery from the seller) the day before on Sunday at 11:30am. It was a part I was waiting for to fix my snow blower. Too bad the notification that it was delivered at 11:30am didn't show up until 4:30pm. Could have fixed my snow blower that afternoon.

That will be a problem with the server or web .
When the job is delivered the PDA sends a signal to the HO computer it has been delivered and that computer then sends out the SMS.
Unless it is a very old system that did not use Wi-Fi or phone so downloads everything when placed back in the cradle at the depot.

The big problem with all big transport companies is they are maned by a mile of very pathetic yes men middle management who can not think for themselves and they fill the ranks of delivery drivers with similar people who provide no threat to their position . They have an absolute belief in the "system" and in the perfection of the system so all the driver has to do is follow the instructions on their PDA and any deviation is absolutely forbidden thus prefer brain dead drivers with zero local knowledge .
Most of them have never driven a delivery van nor done a full days run so they have less than no idea what the job entails and how faulty their perfect "system " is .
If the Fedex driver was in a company truck with a full painted side then he either has the respray & signwrite fee taken out of his wages/ commission if he scratches the paint or gets sacked.
As such if it is not a dead easy reverse in driveway he will be too scared to drive in so will loose money by barrowing in your delivery rather than reversing in.
The dock manager will rather he came back in a perfect truck with 1/2 the deliveries still there than an empty truck with a couple of scratches.
That is the mentality of the management fairly well universally in large transport companies.
When I was delivering office products, daily I was getting commendations from the customers and the dock was over the moon because I delivered everything every day .
One day one of the transport companies shinny bums was upstairs and noticed my van had a yellow roof.
The cringe worthy coward rang the head office in Melbourne ( 1300 km away ) to get a top manager there to send instruction to the Sydney office that I had to return to the warehouse , wait till a replacement driver turned up then off load the entire run to that diver. HE could of course walked down & told me that before I had finished loading , hence the coward tag.
After which I had to go home & repaint the roof white then present the vehicle for inspection and by the end of the month had to replace the van because it was older than the allowable 4 years .
My dock manager was not happy about this but as it came from "god" his hands were tied but if I was to pay the 2 transfer fees, he would allow me to register his own van in my name, take the photos , photocopy the paperwork then reverse the process after approval and he would list my actual van ( with a white roof ) as a back up vehicle which was allowable under the "system".
A neat work around that would have cost me around $ 5,000 to save a $ 50,000/pa contract that put about $ 15,000 in my pocket after costs & tax .
I left
The customers who had been used to my deliveries , which were never the way the PDA decided they should be done , got so annoyed that several changed their supplier after complaining regularly.
The delivery company split my run into 2 in order to reduce the complaints but even then the 2 drivers could rarely manage to complete a full run .
And the kicker is after I had left and they were in the poo, the dock manager from the warehouse rang me and asked me if I would write instruction for the drivers doing my old run so they could complete it . Because he was a nice person & had complained when this happened & ever tried to get me back as a company driver in one of their vans I did what he asked.
But because it required circumventing the entire scanning process he was too scared to put my method into use.
He got sacked a while latter because of all of the complaints .

It is all about Western management philosophy
If a company spends $ 2,000,000 on an upgraded delivery system, that cost has to come from some where other than the share holders pockets .
So it comes out of what the drivers get paid, which generally entails new contracts that are marginally profitable so only the desperate take them up and the desperate are rarely the proficient and would never circumvent the "system"

 

[iowaztr]

bertsmobile1-

Reminds me of our old "Bumper to Bumper" auto parts store. Older middle of the block building, 3 floors of storage but a very small store front. Manager claimed they had 90% of the independent shops and close to 80% of the industrial customers in town due to the availability of parts, remember 3 floors of storage. Repeatedly the best performing store volume wise within that region. However, dead last in "walk in traffic". CarQuest took over, didn't like the low "walk in" numbers. Moved the store to a building along a major highway. Lost probably 90% of the storage they had because most of the store was now for the walk in retail, not commercial/industrial parts. Manager got fired for "underperforming" because the industrial/commercial accounts left as they now had to wait for parts from the warehouse so they were no different (or even worse) than the other parts stores in town. Store closed up about 3 years later.

 

[7394]

No mail monday (President's Day) here. Tuesday, yes got my USPS order..