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A free shipping mystery

romain.goyet.com

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Re: A free shipping mystery

#191

Post by jib »

morsch wrote: post #185
jib wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a mailman in Sweden for about 3 years in the early 2000s. One year full time, temping while doing uni for another two. Full time employees were salaried, with 8h work day averaged over a month. When work was done, you went home. If you worked 6h one day, 10h the next you would not get overtime. Overall, I would guess I worked about 80% of the monthly hours, and I never hit overtime. Longest day I worked was 13h…

Were you delivering mail or packages? Because apartment complexes around here usually have a set of letterboxes just inside or even outside the building, so the mailman doesn't have to climb to the 4th floor.

Mail. In the area I worked there was one apartment area with letterboxes at the door and about 20 areas with the mailbox in the doors of the apartments.

Sweden built a ton of housing (the goal was a million apartments in 10 years or so) back in the 50s and 60s. Those buildings didn't have letterboxes inside, all with letter gaps in the doors (at least where I worked). Newer places typically have them downstairs now.

Re: A free shipping mystery

#192

Post by morsch »

jib wrote: post #191
morsch wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you delivering mail or packages? Because apartment complexes around here usually have a set of letterboxes just inside or even outside the building, so the mailman doesn't have to climb to the 4th floor.

Mail. In the area I worked there was one apartment area with letterboxes at the door and about 20 areas with the mailbox in the doors of the apartments. Sweden built a ton of housing (the goal was a million apartments in 10 years or so) back in the 50s and 60s. Those buildings didn't have letterboxes inside, all with letter gaps in the doors (at least where I worked). Newer places typically have them downstairs now.

Yikes. I presume that's just one of many brilliant design choices made for those 50s/60s apartment buildings.

Re: A free shipping mystery

#193

Post by jib »

morsch wrote: post #192
jib wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mail. In the area I worked there was one apartment area with letterboxes at the door and about 20 areas with the mailbox in the doors of the apartments. Sweden built a ton of housing (the goal was a million apartments in 10 years or so) back in the 50s and 60s. Those buildings didn't have letterboxes inside, all with letter gaps in the doors (at least where I worked). Newer places typically have them downstairs now.

Yikes. I presume that's just one of many brilliant design choices made for those 50s/60s apartment buildings.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme

The houses themselves are pretty good actually, but sadly due to where they are and the amount of them many have become undesirable neighbourhoods.

Re: A free shipping mystery

#194

Post by zeroblue »

Someone posted this on an earlier thread about the article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_zone China uses free trade zones extensively. This means that some items a moved in bulk to domestic staging areas, so not everything is leaving from China, I believe that there are requirements that they be postmarked from China due to import export rules. Second, China's postal system is heavily subsidized and therefore much of the costs are hidden in the system.

Re: A free shipping mystery

#195

Post by asab »

tyingq wrote: post #13
Animats wrote: post #10

It's a combination of subsidies in China [2] and really low Universal Postal Union rates for terminal delivery from China to the US.[1] Terminal delivery in the US is about $1/Kg. Market rate from Shentzen to Long Beach to ship a container is about $1200 right now. [1] http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/united-nations-subsidy-chinese... [2] http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cp396.pdf

>>Market rate from Shenzhen to Long Beach to ship a >>container is about $1200 right now Just so there's context, the actual cost is much, much higher than $1200. That's just the payment for the ocean journey. The other costs are factory to port (varies), insurance+docs (few hundred), destination port charges ($1k or so), customs bond, and then the actual duty for the imported items. Lastly, of course, getting the co…

I'm curious where these numbers come from - is it based on your experience, or how is the calculation done?

Re: A free shipping mystery

#196

Post by rargulati »

Stems from the USPS/China Post ePacket agreement: http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y15/m10/i09/s02

It's actually cheaper in many cases to ship from China-->US than US-->US

Newgistics handles AliExpress's inbound here in the USA. AliExpress-->China Post-->Newgistics-->USPS: https://newgistics.com/news-archive/aliexpress-selects-newgi...

Source for the above: Matthew Hertz from Shyp

Re: A free shipping mystery

#197

Post by robocat »

teekert wrote: post #153

I have often bought stuff from deal-extreme, miniinthebox, lightinthebox, banggood, etc. They always ship for free to the Netherlands. It does often take more than a month to arrive though. I always assumed they just throw everything in a big container that goes out on a ship and that the whole operation is sponsored by the Chinese Government. Edit: Pro-tip: Don't buy phone chargers, naively I left a Raspberry Pi run…

> Don't buy phone chargers

Agreed. I had a cheap USB charger that was working fine suddenly explode on my desk with droplets of molten metal ending up welded to my phone screen. Never again!

Re: A free shipping mystery

#198

Post by wallacoloo »

jib wrote: post #171
wallacoloo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I don't know much about how mailmen are employed, but there are a few scenarios in which it could turn out that the mailman would have been paid those 3 cents regardless . The simplest: he's salaried. However, I don't think mailmen generally are. Alternatively, the mailman is paid hourly but is expected to put in 40 (or some other constant) hours of work per week. His primary role is to deliver mail, but any extra…

I was a mailman in Sweden for about 3 years in the early 2000s. One year full time, temping while doing uni for another two. Full time employees were salaried, with 8h work day averaged over a month. When work was done, you went home. If you worked 6h one day, 10h the next you would not get overtime. Overall, I would guess I worked about 80% of the monthly hours, and I never hit overtime. Longest day I worked was 13h…

Thanks so much for weighing in. I'm sure the details vary by country, but it's still great insight into the business.

Re: A free shipping mystery

#199

Post by RealGeek »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #142
RealGeek wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just searched and found this http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/united-nations-subsidy-chinese...

That article has no mention of subsidies from the Chinese government.

I heard about Chinese Govt. subsidizing logistics on a news channel a while ago.

I Googled about it yesterday and found this insightful article instead.

Re: A free shipping mystery

#200

Post by tyingq »

asab wrote: post #195
tyingq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Market rate from Shenzhen to Long Beach to ship a >>container is about $1200 right now Just so there's context, the actual cost is much, much higher than $1200. That's just the payment for the ocean journey. The other costs are factory to port (varies), insurance+docs (few hundred), destination port charges ($1k or so), customs bond, and then the actual duty for the imported items. Lastly, of course, getting the co…

I'm curious where these numbers come from - is it based on your experience, or how is the calculation done?

My experience. We bring in 3 or 4 containers a year.

The costs above and beyond just the "ocean shipping" part for the most recent one was $1914. $830 of it was the customs duty, which will vary wildly depending on the HTS code of what's being imported, and how much you brought in.

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