[DaleM]

I ordered some RAM for my primary PC and out of curiosity checked its tracking history via UPS. Traveling from Boise, Idaho to Lawton, Oklahoma, here's the route.

Boise to Salt Lake to Louisville (UPS hub I suspect) to Dallas to Oklahoma City to Lawton. Not complaining mind you, just amused at the route.

 

[68KMENO]

but do you get frequent flier miles credit ??

 

[ChaosEnvy]

Lawton you say.. I have a buddy that lives in Lawton, been a few years since I've seen him. He moved their from IL.

Interesting route indeed.

 

[DaleM]

Memory arrived. Just for fun I added the transit time (assuming air most of the way) for the memory from Boise to Lawton.

Comparing departure to arrival scans it went from Boise to Salt Lake to Louisville to Dallas to Oklahoma City to Lawton is 9.5 hours - not counting sitting around time, just departure to arrival.

From the departure at the Lawton UPS station at 5:10 A.M. until its arrival at 7:42 P.M. it took 14.5 hours just riding around the truck in town. Somehow I just find that amusing.

 

[jonh]

I'll bet you got it on time.
Jon

 

[DaleM]

I received it in the 2-3 business days I paid for, you bet. Funny thing is UPS usually arrives well before 7:00 P.M. and I was online tracking it again when he pulled up.

 

[Steve340]

UPS Rocks, awesome maintained aircraft too

 

[larrym]

Shipping these days can be pretty amazing.

I recently ordered an Ipod on-line from Apple. The FedEx routing was Shanghai, China; Anchorage, AK; Seattle. I had it 2 days after I place the order, including a personalized inscription on the Ipod included at no extra cost with the on-line order.

Of coarse I benefit by the low cost of things imported from China, but it really bothers me that hardly anything is manufactured in the U.S. of A. anymore.

Chinese cars will be in the showrooms soon and China just announced that they intend to manufacture commercial airliners. Boeing and Airbus here comes the competition.

 

[SuperChevy402]

Sometimes the routing can be sort of funny, but there must be a method to their madness. I knew a guy who worked at the main FedEx hub in Memphis and even with millions of packages a day, and some with very long distances to go in very short times, it ran like a Swiss watch

 

[larrym]

Several years ago I saw a TV special that explained FedExs system for processing packages. Hard as it may seem to believe, all packages, including overnight packages, regardless of their destination passed through their Memphis sorting facility. This means that if I in Seattle wanted to send a package to Portland, Oregon, it was first flown to Memphis, TN for sorting and then flown back to Portland.

I tried to check that concept out by doing a Google search and found this article: http://www.my-esm.com/story/story/OEG20010510S0034

This paragraph way down in the text, verifies that this use to be the case even for a package originating in a New York city address and headed for another New York address; however, they have revised their system so the package doesn't now have to go by way of Memphis, TN.

Before, a package from New York going to New York left New York and went to Memphis and then went back. Now, if we have a package from the East Coast that's going to be delivered to an East Coast location, it never leaves the East Coast," Owens said. "That's a process that our planning engineers go through to ensure that those extra steps are avoided. If a package doesn't have to go on an airplane, the planning engineers have to make sure it doesn't get on an airplane."