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Bike manufacturer sees huge reduction in delivery damage by printing TV on box

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Re: Bike manufacturer sees huge reduction in delivery damage by printing TV on box

#111
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wage for a UPS driver is somewhere around $11 an hour, with seasonal temporary help making less. Most of them are part time drivers, so they have to work a second job to make ends meet. Surprisingly, if you pay people crap and force them to look for new employment while working for you due to low wages, no hours, and poor advancement opportunities, you tend to get bad service. And if you rely on seasonal temps yo…

Huh. I actually find that figure really hard to believe. 17-ish years ago I got a temp seasonal job at one of UPS's air hubs, and they paid me $8 per hour. $8 in then-money is equivalent to more than $11 in now-money. So you're saying I was better paid as a seasonal temp than people who are much higher in UPS's pecking order than that are nowadays. Now it being part time, yeah, I believe that. Pretty much everyone in…

Very possible. Median real wage growth (inflation adjusted) have been sluggish post recession, and considering the explosive rise in wages in certain knowledge sectors, that must be offset by negative real wage growth sectors elsewhere.

Re: Bike manufacturer sees huge reduction in delivery damage by printing TV on box

#113
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought experiment: for sufficiently fragile & expensive products, attach a small black-box style "smart tag" equipped with a accelerometers. It's reset when yielded to the shippers, and read when the shipment is delivered. If the recorded accelerations are out of bounds (e.g. beyond the shipper's SLAs, beyond packaging standards, etc.), then there's ready evidence of shipper abuse.

Simple and cheap versions of this exist: https://www.uline.com/Grp_332/Damage-Indicators [edit] Uh, maybe not so cheap from this particular company. You probably could do this for less with a little electronic device.

These are exactly what I had in mind. I have one on our child's car seat to see if its shock limit is exceeded so I can safely pass it on to someone else once our child outgrows it.

Re: Bike manufacturer sees huge reduction in delivery damage by printing TV on box

#114
post #112

Boeing puts a picture of a Lamborghini on their first class seats while in the factory in Evert to covey the cost of them -- amazingly they do cost about as much as one too.

Do you have anywhere I can read more about this? It sounds interesting.

Re: Bike manufacturer sees huge reduction in delivery damage by printing TV on box

#115
post #68

It seems like people who are responsible don't care anymore. Maybe it's the wages, the pressure or whatever. It looks like it's about time to replace even more humans from the equation.

Yeah but could a robot deliver as good as this?

https://scontent-lax3-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/142...

Re: Bike manufacturer sees huge reduction in delivery damage by printing TV on box

#116

I wonder what sort of damage these bikes are receiving, because they're designed to be ridden by a person... a TV is definitely far more fragile.

Honestly I'm not sure. I worked at a bike shop and we would box and ship a bike for $50. I sold and shipped probably 4 bikes when I worked there and they all were received without so much as a scratch. I'd lay this one on the bike company. I'm guessing they didn't have big enough boxes for cardboard to sit between the bike and the outer box, or didn't add enough padding around the tubes or some combination of both.

I smoked 1 cigar and didn't have cancer. This whole smoking causes cancer is such a fad.

Re: Bike manufacturer sees huge reduction in delivery damage by printing TV on box

#117
post #68

It seems like people who are responsible don't care anymore. Maybe it's the wages, the pressure or whatever. It looks like it's about time to replace even more humans from the equation.

Can we replace you with a robot so I never have to read such an ignorant, inhumane comment again? Why don't we try treating low wage workers like their valuable, and give them more credit when they do a good job instead of their CEO's getting the big bonuses? You'd be amazed what people are capable of when treated right. If you still get losers smashing up boxes, fire them. By that point there will be a line of applicants waiting to do a better job, and the irresponsible worker can go and figure out why he or she got fired and do better next crack at it.

So sick of the endless chatter of this "automation utopia" here. It doesn't exist, it's not going to exist likely for hundreds of years, so lets turn the blind eye while the automaters rake in the profits and wages continue to stagnate for the next 40 years like they have the previous 40.

Re: Bike manufacturer sees huge reduction in delivery damage by printing TV on box

#118
post #103
post #68

It seems like people who are responsible don't care anymore. Maybe it's the wages, the pressure or whatever. It looks like it's about time to replace even more humans from the equation.

The wage for a UPS driver is somewhere around $11 an hour, with seasonal temporary help making less. Most of them are part time drivers, so they have to work a second job to make ends meet. Surprisingly, if you pay people crap and force them to look for new employment while working for you due to low wages, no hours, and poor advancement opportunities, you tend to get bad service. And if you rely on seasonal temps yo…

Source for those wages? Anecdote: I have several high school friends who drive/deliver for UPS, it's a union shop, they appear to be reasonably well paid (both own homes in typical middle-class neighborhoods, take vacations, etc).

Re: Bike manufacturer sees huge reduction in delivery damage by printing TV on box

#119
post #112

Boeing puts a picture of a Lamborghini on their first class seats while in the factory in Evert to covey the cost of them -- amazingly they do cost about as much as one too.

Do you have anywhere I can read more about this? It sounds interesting.

Go to their factory tour. :)

Could just find a mention here: http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/travel/inside-the-dreamlin...

But it's on a seat cover and it's a cheesy clip art pic. Not much to it.

Re: Bike manufacturer sees huge reduction in delivery damage by printing TV on box

#120
post #103
post #68

It seems like people who are responsible don't care anymore. Maybe it's the wages, the pressure or whatever. It looks like it's about time to replace even more humans from the equation.

The wage for a UPS driver is somewhere around $11 an hour, with seasonal temporary help making less. Most of them are part time drivers, so they have to work a second job to make ends meet. Surprisingly, if you pay people crap and force them to look for new employment while working for you due to low wages, no hours, and poor advancement opportunities, you tend to get bad service. And if you rely on seasonal temps yo…

Huh, Google surfaces pages that claim it's nearly 3X that, $30/hour.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ups+driver+wage

I usually see UPS drivers cited as an example of a unionized, middle-class job.

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