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Logistics Is Dying; Or – Dude, Where's My Mail?

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Re: Logistics Is Dying; Or – Dude, Where's My Mail?

#31

Post by sam1714 »

ChilledTonic wrote: post #6
IAmBroom wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The author seems to think that logistics should be like memory and Moore's Law, but in fact there are very rigid limits on the system. Sea transport isn't going to get any faster - probably ever. Air transport is subsonic. Ground transport is limited to highway speeds for trucks, and about the same in the US for rail (because we suck and can't have nice things). These hard limits mean that the improvements in…

Fair points, but I think you're responding to an argument my piece isn't quite making. The complaint isn't that logistics should follow Moore's Law or that we need same-day delivery for everything. It's that we're paying more for objectively worse service than we had a decade ago. Services aren't "adapting to consumer needs", its just objective decay being masked as optimization. The Lettre Verte example actually rei…

Logistics requires lots of humans, and worse, humans traveling. That's inherently risky and a difficult physical job. People simply would rather have an information economy job like a software developer where the danger is a severe coffee spill.

The humans who do work in logistics have been demanding higher standards of living and therefore better pay and healthcare in first-world countries.

UPS drivers are unionized in the US and their cost to the company (salary + healthcare + pension) is now over $170,000/year each.

Re: Logistics Is Dying; Or – Dude, Where's My Mail?

#33

Post by atoav »

I worked in the shipping department of an online store as a side job during my studies, so I know a bit or two about this.

The issue is that management of all shipping companies is expected to run their services 100% resource-efficiently and without any slack (wasted money). The problem is that the only way to do that you are essentially constantly above capacity.

I had certain services where literally every second month a new unfortunate subcontractor with yet another beaten up white van would show up. Needless to say their service quality was absolutely shit, since those subcontractors didn't even get a chance to learn how to do the job properly.

Extracting as much money as possible from shipping isn't the same as providing a good service. Reliable service needs redundancy and underutilized capacity. If your laptops CPU was constantly at 150% load you wouldn't say "Great I am not wasting resources", you would get a beefier CPU that gives you enough headroom for your daily tasks.

Re: Logistics Is Dying; Or – Dude, Where's My Mail?

#34

Post by fennecfoxy »

GuB-42 wrote: post #2

When "free shipping" is what consumers expect, do you think people are ready to pay for better service? It the package is lost, it is often cheaper to write it off as a loss and send another item or refund. If you need overnight shipping, you can have it, but it is not cheap, so most people won't do it. As for documents, is is all electronic now. Logistics is very much alive, but it is adapted to our needs, that is m…

This is not it. Services are bad because month by month year by year, capitalism demands that they produce endless growth. When there's nothing legit left to strip down then they start taking out the floorboards.

Exact same thing as shrinkflation; make the product smaller for more money because there's no other way that the execs and shareholders get to jerk each other off this year. And then the next year, and the next.

Delivery services/couriers have been having to deliver more packages faster for less money YoYoYoY.

Re: Logistics Is Dying; Or – Dude, Where's My Mail?

#35

Post by 4ggr0 »

comrade1234 wrote: post #5

Speak for yourself. My mail is usually delivered next-day and I can track it live on the truck. I get annoyed when something I ordered is being delivered by someone other than swisspost. I get notifications the day before and day of delivery. Swisspost had been cutting its budget back consolidating locations but despite this is delivering even better service using tech.

it could help that our country is pretty small, rich, and has about the same population size as New York City :)

but i do agree, Swiss Post is great. live-tracking while they're delivering, nice app which shows you all info etc.

Re: Logistics Is Dying; Or – Dude, Where's My Mail?

#36

Post by Zababa »

> With modern technology, the USPS estimates that a similar sized letter would take a maximum of five days. With planes, trains, and automobiles available to us, we’ve shaved off about two days.

> Two days. In 165 years.

Going back to the start of the article, just like the Pony Express was closed due to telegrams, letter speed is not that important most of the time thanks to phones, internet, etc.

Re: Logistics Is Dying; Or – Dude, Where's My Mail?

#38

Post by citrin_ru »

IAmBroom wrote: post #3
GuB-42 wrote: post #2

When "free shipping" is what consumers expect, do you think people are ready to pay for better service? It the package is lost, it is often cheaper to write it off as a loss and send another item or refund. If you need overnight shipping, you can have it, but it is not cheap, so most people won't do it. As for documents, is is all electronic now. Logistics is very much alive, but it is adapted to our needs, that is m…

Agreed. The author seems to think that logistics should be like memory and Moore's Law, but in fact there are very rigid limits on the system. Sea transport isn't going to get any faster - probably ever. Air transport is subsonic. Ground transport is limited to highway speeds for trucks, and about the same in the US for rail (because we suck and can't have nice things). These hard limits mean that the improvements in…

> Sea transport isn't going to get any faster - probably ever.

It seems to me that modern freight ships are optimized for capacity/cost ratio and not for speed - hull shape is very close to a box with a short bow/stern attached. I'm not an expert but it looks like if you make the hull longer and a bow/stern narrow you can go faster. Military ships are optimized for speed and their hull shape is not a box.

Re: Logistics Is Dying; Or – Dude, Where's My Mail?

#39

Post by Tade0 »

fennecfoxy wrote: post #34
GuB-42 wrote: post #2

When "free shipping" is what consumers expect, do you think people are ready to pay for better service? It the package is lost, it is often cheaper to write it off as a loss and send another item or refund. If you need overnight shipping, you can have it, but it is not cheap, so most people won't do it. As for documents, is is all electronic now. Logistics is very much alive, but it is adapted to our needs, that is m…

This is not it. Services are bad because month by month year by year, capitalism demands that they produce endless growth. When there's nothing legit left to strip down then they start taking out the floorboards. Exact same thing as shrinkflation; make the product smaller for more money because there's no other way that the execs and shareholders get to jerk each other off this year. And then the next year, and the n…

> make the product smaller for more money because there's no other way that the execs and shareholders get to jerk each other off this year.

That's an amusing image but the real reason they're doing it is that often those assets are used as collateral to acquire debt and cannot, under any circumstances, decrease in value.

It reached a point where it doesn't matter if the service is shitty or not rendered at all - as long as stock increases in value no one cares.

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