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Will Amazon Kill FedEx?

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Re: Will Amazon Kill FedEx?

#11
post #4

FedEx is both an established airline AND one of the most trusted logistics companies on the planet. So Amazon can beat them when they can do this on demand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-qPtWc4heA For brevity: the above purports to show a time lapse of FedEx's fleet of DC-10s, Airbus A310s etc - packed with fuel, valuables and people - scrambling for the Memphis, TN hub and hooking in handily around a massive ang…

It is really FedEx who organizes that, or the air controllers in Memphis dealing with pilots directly?

Re: Will Amazon Kill FedEx?

#12
post #10
post #5

Just yesterday I had someone from the other coast leave a laptop charger. Rather messing with the UPS or FEDEX, I just ordered a new one and had it delivered to their address.

That's like $70 you didn't need to spend. Hell of a convenience fee. I've only recently hit power cord saturation, though.

Maybe he didn't have a Mac, and the difference between the charger and shipping wasn't that big.

Re: Will Amazon Kill FedEx?

#13
post #9
post #4

FedEx is both an established airline AND one of the most trusted logistics companies on the planet. So Amazon can beat them when they can do this on demand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-qPtWc4heA For brevity: the above purports to show a time lapse of FedEx's fleet of DC-10s, Airbus A310s etc - packed with fuel, valuables and people - scrambling for the Memphis, TN hub and hooking in handily around a massive ang…

The Fedex courier in my area has been consistently bad for years and doesn't get fired. Two weeks ago: doesn't come, doesn't leave a notice, two days in a row, claiming he came, I had a to exchange some salty emails with customer service to get my package. Each time I had to use Fedex these last 3 years I've had to do this cycle. On the other hand I have developped a "good relationship" with the UPS courier.

The thing is, people like you and me are not primary customers of Fedex. Corporate is where it's at - when I worked at an oil refinery in Scotland, engineers would request parts that had to be literally delivered ASAP, and refinery didn't think twice about paying a bill in thousands of pounds for overnight delivery of few parts from US.

Re: Will Amazon Kill FedEx?

#14
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like $70 you didn't need to spend. Hell of a convenience fee. I've only recently hit power cord saturation, though.

Maybe he didn't have a Mac, and the difference between the charger and shipping wasn't that big.

Where's the notion that non-mac chargers are any cheaper from? Have you seen prices of genuine HP, Dell or Lenovo chargers? They are just as, if not more expensive than Apple chargers. Sure, you can buy a replacement charger from amazon for $20 but then you can't compare it to a genuine apple charger.

Re: Will Amazon Kill FedEx?

#15
post #4

FedEx is both an established airline AND one of the most trusted logistics companies on the planet. So Amazon can beat them when they can do this on demand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-qPtWc4heA For brevity: the above purports to show a time lapse of FedEx's fleet of DC-10s, Airbus A310s etc - packed with fuel, valuables and people - scrambling for the Memphis, TN hub and hooking in handily around a massive ang…

algorithms are way better at controlling traffic than humans. what you're seeing is just the best so far

Re: Will Amazon Kill FedEx?

#16
post #4

FedEx is both an established airline AND one of the most trusted logistics companies on the planet. So Amazon can beat them when they can do this on demand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-qPtWc4heA For brevity: the above purports to show a time lapse of FedEx's fleet of DC-10s, Airbus A310s etc - packed with fuel, valuables and people - scrambling for the Memphis, TN hub and hooking in handily around a massive ang…

I don't see the point of that video.

a) If anything, it is not a feat of Company, but of nowadays IFR systems in cooperation with ATC guys who probably sweated off at least 10 pounds during that shift.

b) Each and every airline does that, from top notch VIP charters to those we-are-declaring-emergency-because-our-company-doesn't-let-us-take-in-enough-fuel-so-we-are-landing-RIGHT-NOW-GET-OFF-OUR-WAY poor souls piloting Ryanairs.

c) Aviation is a market. If you pay, you get aircrafts and pilots. If you pay good, you get good pilots. That's it.

d) This is very inside the box thinking. An equivalent of this would be showing a video of a bunch of guys running to the local hardware shop, hastily throwing HW boxes into a car, driving fast and furious back to the site, assembling a server, plugging it in, installing OS and presenting it to the customer: here, your server. So Amazon can beat them only when they can do all of this on demand? No, they just built the AWS and "on demand" now means just clicking "I want an instance now" or even letting a balancer spin that up for you, done.

The article is talking about 15 years horizon and although that is a very brave speculation of Amazon's business plans and future events, just think about what 15 years means. 15 years ago, Windows XP has just RTMed a week before. GPS meant some ugly expensive box waiting an eternity to get a fix. Common large and heavy desktop crates called personal computers struggled with even playing a DivX video in CRT resolution. Capturing overhead footage meant flying an expensive helicopter running on expensive fuel and operated by highly trained pilot. Nowadays, you can buy an entire device called "quadcopter" for less than an hour of helicopter flight time and fly around and videotape everything like in a computer game. We have small slates of glass called "smartphones" that smoothly play 2880x2160 videos while projecting them onto a 3D surface twice (VR phone-based headsets) or even smoothly render an entire VR game scene from polygons. We have cars using half as much fuel. You can tap on your slate of glass and a car arrives for you.

In 15 years we can have supertough drones flying right through hurricanes, micro hyperloops moving small cargo around entire states, warehouses on every other corner with duplicated stock, carpooling packet delivery services like some Uber-Fedex hybrid, or even outright cargo teleports spitting out pizzas from local restaurants, shoe orders from Amazon and hell monsters from Mars military bases with id Software calling out software patents on that and claiming intellectual property on 50% of incoming daemons...

Sorry for long post - basically what I wanted to say is that everybody can do that with airplanes.

Re: Will Amazon Kill FedEx?

#17
post #3

Why does Amazon need to kill any service. Even with their cloud platform, rack space, digital ocean and plenty of other providers are thriving and coming up.

AWS is infrastructure as a service. Digital Ocean sells virtual private servers. They aren't even remotely the same product. I host a blog on DO for a few buck a month. My company hosts their entire infrastructure on AWS for 4 different applications. Apples and oranges.

You can do the same on DO, it's just slightly more involved, almost certainly less resiliant and they supply less PaaS options.

In fact as an IaaS if you throw kubernetes at it, run ceph and put a little effort into getting autoscaling, then you have a knock-off cloud.

Amazons value is that it's cheaper for a small company than hiring the people who can do this well and you can hire a generalist to glue it all together.

Re: Will Amazon Kill FedEx?

#18
I'm surprised this journalist, who apparently has some in-depth knowledge about the shipping industry, seems to be completely unaware of FedEx's contract with the US Postal Service. FedEx moves ALL mail that goes by air. That includes Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express. I don't see Amazon killing a company with a huge customer like that.

Re: Will Amazon Kill FedEx?

#19
post #4

FedEx is both an established airline AND one of the most trusted logistics companies on the planet. So Amazon can beat them when they can do this on demand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-qPtWc4heA For brevity: the above purports to show a time lapse of FedEx's fleet of DC-10s, Airbus A310s etc - packed with fuel, valuables and people - scrambling for the Memphis, TN hub and hooking in handily around a massive ang…

needs more 64kbps mp3 audio.

Re: Will Amazon Kill FedEx?

#20

It has definitely been replacing the need for FedEx with it's super fast delivery, although some Amazon items still come via FedEx...

Amazon has almost 100% been using the local Prime Now drivers to deliver boxes - which is great because they come next day. Down side is drivers are always new and have no experience delivering mail. It's gotten a little better but I had to call amazon and request that their drivers not call me to tell me to meet them at the corner of the block for my package.

I've figured out that if I want something tomorrow, I check the prime now site and see if it's available there. If so there's a very good chance it'll come overnight.

What I wonder if how are the drivers compensated for delivering a box vs same day? Same day you tip them. So does that mean they're getting screwed for normal deliveries? Knowing amazon, probably.

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