Amazon’s Shipping Empire Is Challenging UPS and FedEx • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon’s Shipping Empire Is Challenging UPS and FedEx

#81

Post by rerx » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #40

rerx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel delivery companies should bid for providing service for the last couple of kilometers, then the winner should get an exclusive contract for some time frame. That's how it's done for other services like regional rail public transport.

Why exclusive contract? What is gained? Rail right of way is exclusive just from geometry and there are various historical "accidents" involved in ownership from no longer relevant reasons but there are myraid ways to deliver mail which may or may not be excluding. A forced bidding system seems to give gameability and artifical barriers to entry for little gain. To give an anchhacic example of the sort of problems it…

I was thinking of parcel deliveries. Narrowish European inner city streets are regularly blocked by delivery trucks and fundamentally it's unnecessarily many of them because there are so many different companies servicing the same street. Where I live double parking on bicycle lanes is extremely common (the individual delivery people often see no alternatives), which poses massive dangers to cyclists. Also these trucks typically are quite large, worsening all issues, because a full load is meant for a long route.

If there was just a single company responsible for some "last mile" area, smaller vehicles like this electric model [1] would suffice. They would distribute parcels from a depot that is filled by larger long distance trucks that do not need to belong to the same company.

The last point is important: If DHL, FedEx, UPS etc. each have their own final storage buildings and delivery fleet, those depots could not all be situated close enough to the target addresses.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter

Re: Amazon’s Shipping Empire Is Challenging UPS and FedEx

#82

Post by galkk » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

miker64 wrote: post #47

Both UPS and FedEx deliveries arrive at my front door in good condition, the delivery drivers bag the packages up if I'm not home and it looks like rain. USPS consistently rings my doorbell and makes sure packages are handed to me rather than left outside. Amazon delivered packages have been: thrown from the street; arrive crushed, punctured, or otherwise damaged; left in the driveway; left in the neighbors yard; nev…

Contrary but also anecdotal evidence. Many ebay sellers use FedEx and it sucks a lot. The deliveries are constantly delayed. No issues with Amazon timing/packages from Amazon, except that they occasionally not brought to the package room and left near mailboxes (I live in apartment complex)

disc: I'm Amazon employee, not in Retail (anymore)

Re: Amazon’s Shipping Empire Is Challenging UPS and FedEx

#83

Post by op00to » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

sigstoat wrote: post #78

miker64 wrote: post #47

Both UPS and FedEx deliveries arrive at my front door in good condition, the delivery drivers bag the packages up if I'm not home and it looks like rain. USPS consistently rings my doorbell and makes sure packages are handed to me rather than left outside. Amazon delivered packages have been: thrown from the street; arrive crushed, punctured, or otherwise damaged; left in the driveway; left in the neighbors yard; nev…

> Amazon delivered packages have been: thrown from the street i watched a USPS driver do that. i'm amazed he could heft the package that far. > USPS consistently rings my doorbell i don't know that they've ever rung my doorbell. > Amazon's last mile service is a complete shit show they all vary in quality by location. fedex was nearly unusable at my last residence, but is great where i'm at now. anecdotes simply aren…

Only amazon rings my doorbell and it’s annoying as shit. My dog goes crazy and all because my toilet paper is here. Jesus Christ nothing ever got stolen ever in the history of ever here, don’t ring the bell.

Re: Amazon’s Shipping Empire Is Challenging UPS and FedEx

#84

Post by pmart123 » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

blevo wrote: post #51

pmart123 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what he means is sometimes there is a benefit to having one service provider. For instance, it is cheaper if a city offers trash pickup in a district to one service provider. The logic is that it’s much more efficient to have one truck stop at each house versus trucks zig zagging around each other.

hm, being 'more efficient' would be true if the ideal way was known. Waterfall would also be 'more efficient' if we knew the right product to make and way to make it. If agile has taught us anything it's that we don't know and we can't know. We learn through trial and error and continually innovate. If there is only one company there is no incentive to innovate and discover better efficiencies. So while the 'logic' i…

The data doesn’t support this though in the example I gave. This is why many cities like LA are switching to a single provider per area. Note, there still is competition. The contracts go through a bidding process and a competitor could try and develop more efficient processes in a different district of LA. It just doesn’t make sense to have five providers serving the same block in a residential area as it drives up the costs for everyone. For more rural areas, the issue becomes that the capex to support the landfill and truck buildout doesn’t typically support multiple competitors.

I suppose this isn’t much different than a development team trying to work in both Postgres and MySQL. Sure, maybe you hedged your bets and your team uses both to experiment which is better, but at some point, it likely is better to develop expertise and experience in one of them especially if it’s a small team.

Re: Amazon’s Shipping Empire Is Challenging UPS and FedEx

#85

Post by Eric_WVGG » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 4:48 AM UTC

michannne wrote: post #69

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in apartment building with ~100 units, lots of Amazon packages and many from independent contractors. I've never even heard of this, and can't imagine them bothering.

I also live in a complex with over 100 units and yet Amazon still manages to track my packages effectively, take pictures, etc, so I'm not sure what the point is. Different delivery people treat packages differently?

My point is that I live in a large building with a lot of people and amazon doesn’t require their serfs to to take pictures, nor was I aware that happened anywhere, nor can I imagine them bothering, as they barely seem capable of doing what they’re contracted to.

Doesn’t bother me, I always select the longest wait anyway.