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

lagomor.ph

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

#51

Post by amoshebb »

rcxdude wrote: post #44
IAmBroom wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With an EV ship that fuel cost increase would probably be negligible. The batteries are still charged by fuel onshore. The cost increase would double, plus engine fatigue would increase. How is that negligible?

Electricity is dirt cheap compared to the useful output you get from fuel, even before you consider buying it wholesale and at times when demand is otherwise low.

We should run electric third rail along the Mississippi. It’s already barges with tugs so a few electric tugboats mostly running during daylight hours, we could electrify most of this by just replacing a few tugboats. Make the lines high capacity enough to run along the coasts, and a fleet of tugs could be a huge dispatchable load, slow steaming could free up a lot, and going just a few kts faster would mop up a ton of what may be otherwise curtailed

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

#52

Post by wombatpm »

kotaKat wrote: post #42
wombatpm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USPS is in year 4 of a 10 year overhaul of its infrastructure. New facilities with new equipment optimized for the current mail mix. Magazines and catalogs used to be huge. Now they are a fraction of their volume. First class letter volume is crashing as everyone goes paperless. Where there use to be separate facilities for processing first class, bulk mail, and packages; the new facilities deal with everything.…

Even simple "changes" (like cutting a single truck) cause massive mayhem in their wake. The simple "elimination" of nightly mail pickup from rural post offices has resulted in multi-day backlogs just getting anything out of your local Post Office. If I walk into any of my local POs in the county this morning to ship a Priority Mail Express letter overnight, they will not guarantee that it will be received tomorrow. T…

Yes. The only reason bug shippings are getting same day is because they are bypassing most of the postal network and dropping it off in time for the days final sortation for delivery.

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

#53

Post by noAnswer »

mschild wrote: post #27

Denmarks main postal carrier discontinued letter delivery last year. Living in Germany I find the contrast always interesting and often, unfortunately, annoying. Almost anything legal has to be done on paper via letter. Fax (yes, really) is one of the only other alternatives that is accepted. Im just really glad that after moving, my new hometown is significantly stepping up their digital game and making it as easy a…

I sometimes wonder if I'm doing something wrong (as a German citizen). What are all this legal letters, people supposedly get all the time? Since I have "Briefankündigung" where I get a picture of the envelope via e-mail the night before it gets delivered I just checked all my mail of 2025. (Excluding Spam, not even 10 letters. The majority where RFID-card delivers.) I got the voting card for the 2025 Bundestag election and the car tax guys did sent me something because of a new car. Why the later didn't use Elster for that, I have no idea.

I give you that. Most organisations are paper first and you have to login and select "digital communication only" once.

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

#54

Post by HWR_14 »

amoshebb wrote: post #51
rcxdude wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electricity is dirt cheap compared to the useful output you get from fuel, even before you consider buying it wholesale and at times when demand is otherwise low.

We should run electric third rail along the Mississippi. It’s already barges with tugs so a few electric tugboats mostly running during daylight hours, we could electrify most of this by just replacing a few tugboats. Make the lines high capacity enough to run along the coasts, and a fleet of tugs could be a huge dispatchable load, slow steaming could free up a lot, and going just a few kts faster would mop up a ton…

Tugs could afford the weight of a bunch of even lead-acid batteries and go electric without the need for a huge amount of infrastructure going the entire length of the Mississippi.

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

#55

Post by lmm »

IAmBroom wrote: post #25
lmm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we paying more? Or are we being lied to about the rate of inflation?

A completely different topic.

Hardly. Whether we are paying more for less is intimately linked to whether we are, in fact, paying more.

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

#56

Post by lmm »

klatchex_too wrote: post #50
pu_pe wrote: post #41

I think two phenomena are at play here, other than plain-old enshittification: 1) Demand for mailing of common letters and documents has dramatically decreased, so it makes sense to defund the mail system. Economies of scale also suffer, further compounding inefficiency 2) In the times of the Pony Express it was probably ok to accept the death of a few riders here and there. Labor standards and thus costs are a major…

> In the times of the Pony Express it was probably ok to accept the death of a few riders here and there That made me curious so I looked it up: "There is historical documentation that four Pony riders were killed by Indians; one was hanged for murder after he got drunk and killed a man; one died in an unrelated accident; and two froze to death."

Note that that's for a service that ran for 18 months total.

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

#57

Post by lmm »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #17

I find the withdrawal of post services very unsettling. How do you enforce anything with fintechs, banks, insurance companies? You realize that they can freeze your funds and accounts at will, ignore emails, and outright lie over the phone?

How does post help with any of that?

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

#58

Post by mschild »

noAnswer wrote: post #53
mschild wrote: post #27

Denmarks main postal carrier discontinued letter delivery last year. Living in Germany I find the contrast always interesting and often, unfortunately, annoying. Almost anything legal has to be done on paper via letter. Fax (yes, really) is one of the only other alternatives that is accepted. Im just really glad that after moving, my new hometown is significantly stepping up their digital game and making it as easy a…

I sometimes wonder if I'm doing something wrong (as a German citizen). What are all this legal letters, people supposedly get all the time? Since I have "Briefankündigung" where I get a picture of the envelope via e-mail the night before it gets delivered I just checked all my mail of 2025. (Excluding Spam, not even 10 letters. The majority where RFID-card delivers.) I got the voting card for the 2025 Bundestag elect…

I bought a house 2 years ago.

Any communication from water and garbage utilities is always in paper form. No option for digital in any way. When asked it was for "legal" reasons.

Property owner's insurance also sends their legal information and billing updates via letter.

Property tax updates and bills also come exclusively on paper. Even though they have my email and communicate non-billing and legal stuff over that.

I made an inquiry with local Bauamt about something and asked for email communication. The email I got said: "You've requested communication via email. So we're letting you know that we've sent a response to your question via letter.

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

#59

Post by lifestyleguru »

lmm wrote: post #57
lifestyleguru wrote: post #17

I find the withdrawal of post services very unsettling. How do you enforce anything with fintechs, banks, insurance companies? You realize that they can freeze your funds and accounts at will, ignore emails, and outright lie over the phone?

How does post help with any of that?

They are legally obliged to respond to registered letter. Request over registered letter is potential first step in subsequent legal procedure.

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

#60

Post by samrus »

The metric used to gauge the efficacy of the usps was rate of ontime delivery, but whe. The same point was made about the canadian postal service, that was never brought up.

Plus the trend being fixated on is between 2022 and 2024/2025. I feel like the author is being abit disingenuous here by not acknowledging the black swan in the room with those numbers

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