Logistics Again

I have discussed Amazon logistics with people who have some insights into how businesses actually function, with me suspecting that Amazon, and/or some other shipping company, had messed something up, and them arguing that there are things involved which I didn't grasp, things which meant that the quickest route was NOT a straight line.

 

And I've been listening, and I've learned some things. That's how it often works if you talk with smart people, and listen: you learn things. It's great. I recommend it.

I've got another case for the intelligent insiders: USPS says that a package I ordered from Amazon was in a small town in Michigan, about 50 miles away from me, two days. 

According to Google Maps, from that small town to my place is about a 4-hour trip. By bicycle. Somewhat quicker by car.

USPS says that the package is now in Irvine, Texas.

Oh btw, I ordered the item 12 days ago.

Your witness, smart guys. Explain to me how Amazon and USPS have been handling this as well as anyone has a right to reasonably expect.

Or admit the possibility that something has gone wrong.

Oh, I just thought of an explanation: Amazon expected to get the item in that small Michigan town. But they didn't. Eventually they gave up on getting it there -- or maybe they had it there for a while, and then lost it --  and they said, lessee, where else is there one of these things? Aha: Irving.

 

If that's what happened, somehow, it would be much more reassuring to me than if they actually are shipping the package Michigan-to-Texas-to-Michigan. Although I'll be receiving the package the same time either way.

 

Dream Log: Economic Mediocrity in Manhattan

I dreamed I was in a department store in Manhattan when my G-Shock alerted me that a package had been fired at the store like a bullet from far away, and was about to fly through an open window. Quickly I grabbed a drone from a shelf, took it out of its package, assembled it, and got it into the air where if deflected the package, knocking it to the ground and avoiding injury or collision with other goods.

A store manager saw this, assumed that I was already an employee, and set me to work deflecting more packages which flew in through the store's one open window.

I quit this job and got a delivery job, delivering bags of candy from a storefront. However, I felt sure that the commissions for these deliveries must be very low, so when I saw a bunch of people going onto an office to start a day's work on another delivery job, and they said they were always hiring, I tagged along. 

In this job, every single package delivered by anybody contained one Three Musketeers candy bar. We were each given a bag of packages and a list of addresses and sent out. 

I found myself walking in Upper Manhattan looking for 176th St. Other delivery people from the same company, each with a bag of Three Musketeers, were walking along beside me. The streets were filled with a mixture of sea salt left by evaporation from the nearby Atlantic, and toxic waste. There were no sidewalks in this region of warehouses. We dodged speeding semi trucks. The salty poison piled high in the streets was beginning to melt the rubber in the soles of our sneakers. We were afraid it would burn right through our shoes and burn our feet. 

We managed to get out of that area uninjured. But I still hadn't found a single address. I was beginning to wonder what kind of commission I could possibly expect from such a job. I had neglected to ask how much I was going to be paid. 

The boss of my previous job, where I had been delivering bags of candy, and where I had also not asked about the pay, spotted me walking along and yelled at me angrily for disappearing. However, he also made it clear that I was not fired. He was a big burly guy with black handlebar moustaches.

Then things became much more abstract. For example, I was holding a tennis ball inside a steel protective case. Then, I was inside a beauty shop, and a women held my head between her hands as she murmured incantations which I didn't understand. Then, I was in Wisconsin for just a moment. I don't know how I knew it was Wisconsin. It was a rural area, autumn, and the trees were full of firy-bright red and orange and yellow leaves. Very few leaves had fallen yet from the trees. Then I was back in the department store were the dream began, and the store manager was yelling at me for pretending to be an employee. Then I was sitting on the ground in African grasslands among some lions, and I wasn't afraid of them and they weren't afraid of me. Then I was back in NYC, on the sidewalk, with some people I've only met on Facebook. Then I was playing basketball in what appeared to a comfortably-old NYC YMCA or school gym. Then I was testifying before a legislative body in favor of massive expansion of public funding for rooftop-solar, and also in favor of 100% net metering. Then I woke up.

A Question For You Logistics Experts --

-- if a US Postal package being sent from California to Michigan has started off in Coarsegold, CA, and gone from there to Fresno on Tuesday, and from there to Bell Gardens, and then on to San Marcos where it arrived yesterday, on Saturday, and by now, by Sunday, has gone from San Marcos to San Diego... does that mean it's about to get on a boat bound for the Panama Canal, and from the Canal to New York City by boat, maybe the same boat, maybe a second one, and from NYC up the Erie Canal to the Great Lakes and eventually on to Detroit?

Why do I ask? Oh... no reason, really. Just wondering about a hypothetical package. Not a large package, not a bulldozer or a railroad locomotive. Just a book. An entirely hypothetical package containing a book. Couple of pounds.

There's a big port in San Diego. I'm not sure if it's a big rail or air freight hub as well. Maybe it is... *sigh*

PS, 9 Sept 2013, 10:05 AM: If that same small package -- still an entirely hypothetical package, you understand -- which had been in San Diego, California, yesterday, on Sunday, was processed through a USPS sort facility the same day, late yesterday, I think that might tend to indicate that it did not, in fact, travel by boat from San Diego to Michigan. Sounds more like a situation where it had been sent from Coarsegold, California, to Fresno, to Bell Gardens and then to San Marcos, because for some reason it had been put into a bag of mail to be delivered in San Marcos, and then when someone saw that it was addressed to be sent to Michigan, they sent it on from San Marcos to San Diego, a couple dozen miles away, and there put it on a plane to Michigan. In a hypothetical situation like this, I'm guessing maybe the USPS might now be expediting the rest of the delivery to make up for the mix-up which sent the parcel to San Marcos.

I wonder whether any US Mail sent from one part of the US to another part of the US really ever does go through the Panama Canal. I'm sure a lot of it was in the period immediately after the canal was completed in 1914, and I'm sure that before 1914 a lot of it was sent all the way around South America. I'm just not sure whether that route is still taken for any US Mail from the US to the US. But what do I know? nothing, that's what. Like I said, even this route from Coarsegold to Michigan with a detour to San Diego is entirely hypothetical. Makes you think, though. They say that before the US had a transcontinental railroad, the route by sea from New York all the way around South America to San Francisco took far less time than any direct overland route. San Francisco was a bigger city than Los Angeles for a while, and certainly the biggest US west coast port as late as 1900, but how long after that it was bigger than LA, I couldn't say. The movie Chinatown (great, great movie) had given me the impression that by the mid-30's SF was still California's biggest city, and that LA was still waiting to be transformed into a juggernaut by the city's Department of Water and Power. Jake Gittes, the film's protagonist, even says at one point, and I quote: "LA is a small town." However, some historical population figures I randomly grabbed of of the Internet without having a clue how reliable they might be say that LA's population exceeded SF's by 1920, and was almost double SF's by 1930. Could this be yet another example of Hollywood screwing over our historical perceptions in order to sell popcorn?

Anyway, I'm rambling. And it was just a hypothetical package anyway! How many times do I have to say that?! I'm not the one who's on trial here! ATTICA! ATTICA!