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FedEx vs. UPS: opposing models in the delivery business raise questions (2004)

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Re: FedEx vs. UPS: opposing models in the delivery business raise questions (2004)

#31

Post by mensetmanusman »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #20
clumsysmurf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a story posted here not long ago "To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/upshot/to-understand-risi... HN Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15161445

I fully support upward mobility but it's a tough argument to make that it was culturally good for an organization to promote people in part because of seniority. Kodak is dead. In no small part because they lost their ability innovate.

Kodak is dead because of the MBAs outsourcing to Japan for short-term film profits...

Re: FedEx vs. UPS: opposing models in the delivery business raise questions (2004)

#32

Post by bspn »

kylec wrote: post #22

I know it's anecdata, but in my experience UPS is way better about actually delivering packages to me than FedEx is. I live in a building with a call box, to which both FedEx and UPS were given their own codes, but most of the time FedEx "attempts" a delivery they mark it as undeliverable. It's gotten to the point where I'm now preemptively requesting my FedEx-shipped packages to be held at a local FedEx ship & print…

Agree, although my opinion is admittedly influenced by the volume of packages we receive from Amazon delivered by UPS (although USPS seems to be delivering more these days). We tend to have the same UPS delivery person who generally knows the ins-and-outs of the neighborhood to the point where we had a package mis-labeled with the wrong address (same street, missing digit) and he recognized the error and delivered it without our intervention. We tend to receive far fewer Fedex deliveries, but generally if there's a delivery issue it's with them.

Re: FedEx vs. UPS: opposing models in the delivery business raise questions (2004)

#33

Post by hkmurakami »

javiramos wrote: post #23
kylec wrote: post #22

I know it's anecdata, but in my experience UPS is way better about actually delivering packages to me than FedEx is. I live in a building with a call box, to which both FedEx and UPS were given their own codes, but most of the time FedEx "attempts" a delivery they mark it as undeliverable. It's gotten to the point where I'm now preemptively requesting my FedEx-shipped packages to be held at a local FedEx ship & print…

I echo this. I receive about 5-20 packages per day froma variety of vendors and origin countries and I can say that UPS is superior to Fedex in many subtle ways. This has been my experience across the spectrum of offerings: ground, rush air, and freight.

Perhaps I'm comparing apples to oranges but my USPS guy who is the same nice man for at least the last 10 years, has been much more reliable than either the FedEx or UPS delivery staff.

He even collected the strewn around mail from our mailbox the other day and visited us to let us know that someone has likely been stealing our mail and that we should check our credit cards. I'll miss him when he retires soon.

Re: FedEx vs. UPS: opposing models in the delivery business raise questions (2004)

#34

Post by matthjensen »

katastic wrote: post #2

Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but the article seems to slant in favor of FedEx using contractors. And then you look at the pros and cons. FedEx Ground Cons: - No benefits, no overtime pay, no sick time, no insurance - Drivers pay for vehicle, gas, supplies, insurance, and everything else - No company retirement, seemingly less stable environment - No Teamsters contract or collective bargaining - Drivers have only one…

I imagine FedEx thinks of the drivers as partners rather than "temporary commodities". It's a franchise model or close enough. McDonald's calls their analogues, "owner/operators." That's no slur.

Re: FedEx vs. UPS: opposing models in the delivery business raise questions (2004)

#35

Post by VintageCool »

Clubber wrote: post #25
godzillabrennus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully support upward mobility but it's a tough argument to make that it was culturally good for an organization to promote people in part because of seniority. Kodak is dead. In no small part because they lost their ability innovate.

Kodak innovated just too late. They wanted to milk the profits from their film market as long as they could. That certainly wasn't a worker's decision.

Kodak innovated too early, too. They had the first digital cameras. They were producing digital cameras through the 1990s and the 2000s.

Their problem was that they were fundamentally a chemicals company. They weren't as good as consumer electronics as the Japanese consumer electronics companies, and they weren't as good at the web as Silicon Valley web companies.

And, ultimately, they wanted to milk the chemical film business as long as they could and perpetually overestimated the popularity of film cameras versus digital.

That reminds me of a passage from Robert Caro's Master of the Senate:

"Vote-counting" -- predicting legislators' votes in advance -- is one of the most vital of the political arts, but it is an art that few can master, for it is peculiarly subject to the distortions of sentiment and romantic preconceptions. A person psychologically for intellectually convinced of the arguments on one side of a controversial issue feels that arguments so convincing to him must be equally convincing to others. And therefore, as Harry McPherson puts it, "Most people tend to be much more optimistic in their counts than the situation deserves... True believers were always inclined to attribute more votes to their side than actually existed."

Re: FedEx vs. UPS: opposing models in the delivery business raise questions (2004)

#36

Post by warent »

sjg007 wrote: post #19
katastic wrote: post #2

Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but the article seems to slant in favor of FedEx using contractors. And then you look at the pros and cons. FedEx Ground Cons: - No benefits, no overtime pay, no sick time, no insurance - Drivers pay for vehicle, gas, supplies, insurance, and everything else - No company retirement, seemingly less stable environment - No Teamsters contract or collective bargaining - Drivers have only one…

FedEx => Uber => FedUbX Delivery

Fubex Delivery

Re: FedEx vs. UPS: opposing models in the delivery business raise questions (2004)

#37

Post by nitwit005 »

coopernewby wrote: post #13

This article was written in 2004. Starting In 2005 FedEx got in a bunch of misclassification lawsuits over using 1099 contractors, today they have lost over $453 Million to these settlements. http://www.talentwave.com/fedex-worker-misclassification-cas...

Yes, the whole thing sounded illegal, so not all that surprising a result.

Re: FedEx vs. UPS: opposing models in the delivery business raise questions (2004)

#38

Post by jacob019 »

My company has had a much better experience with FedEx than UPS. FedEx employees seem happier. Our driver owns his route and treats us like his personal customer. The UPS guys are nice too but tend to have that postal worker attitude and don't seem as happy. UPS loses more packages, though that seems to have improved. UPS support sucks and their API is even worse. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to pull my hair out while in a UPS call queue being transferred around between clueless front line reps. Their automatic billing has broken on us over the years to the point where we would have to call in to pay each invoice manually or start getting collections notices. They couldn't fix it and we had to just open a new account. This happened twice! FedEx support OTOH is excellent. While I'm greatful for the support of my friends at UPS, I greatly prefer to do business with FedEx.

Re: FedEx vs. UPS: opposing models in the delivery business raise questions (2004)

#39

Post by dec0dedab0de »

kylec wrote: post #22

I know it's anecdata, but in my experience UPS is way better about actually delivering packages to me than FedEx is. I live in a building with a call box, to which both FedEx and UPS were given their own codes, but most of the time FedEx "attempts" a delivery they mark it as undeliverable. It's gotten to the point where I'm now preemptively requesting my FedEx-shipped packages to be held at a local FedEx ship & print…

FedEx has always been awful in my experience. I've had them drive on my lawn, leave stuff in the rain, and not knock on the door. The estimated date is always wrong. They even fucked up kinkos somehow. The only thing I like about them is the hidden arrow in the logo.
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