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When a Bike Company Put a TV on Its Box, Shipping Damages Went Down (2017)
- chaddattilio 8y agoDid they control for the 100 other reasons why this might have happened?
- warp_factor 8y agoThat's truly thinking "out of the box"
- whatshisface 8y agoI've often wondered about what you would discover if you were to send accelerometers through various channels, over various distances, and inside of various packages. A database of carrier/packaging/haul distance/acceleration history tuples would be a valuable B2B product for many manufacturers.
- floatingatoll 8y agoYou would discover business proprietary information that FedEx and UPS certainly must be collecting every day in their supply chains already today.
- harshulpandav 8y agoShipping costs might increase
- hiccuphippo 8y agoWho pays the bill when a product arrives damaged? Shipping costs might go up but insurance or returns could go down as well.
- xiphias2 8y agoWhat matters is total cost, which decreases. Shipping cost could be 0 at any time if the cost of the bike contains it.
- mikeash 8y agoMy innovative shipping startup will ship your package for free! The recipient will never see it, but at least we’re cheaper than FedEx.
- anonytrary 8y agoThis is a very neat idea. I wonder if transport companies already do this to their own packages as a form of auditing and optimizing their own services. Or if they do it to other companies as a comparison metric. As a 3rd party, you would need large N data points to have actionable information. It might be that collecting the data points costs more than what they are worth.
- MRD85 8y agoIf you're a company with multiple locations and you send items between those locations then it shouldn't be too expensive to put some tracking technology inside to collect travel information.
- tyingq 8y agoPopular Mechanics did something like that back in 2010: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/a6284/which-shipping-company-is-kindest-to-your-packages/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/a6284/wh...
- mrsuprawsm 8y agoThis sort of thing already exists, albeit in a low-tech method, using ball bearings or coloured gels. For example: https://spotsee.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/tiltwatch-plus-2.png https://spotsee.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/tiltwatch-plus...
- hlidotbe 8y agoThat's basically what http://www.cargosense.com/services.html http://www.cargosense.com/services.html does. I remember Rich Kilmer presenting a beacon a couple years ago that does GPS/accelerometer/temperature/whatnot to monitor packages.
- HarryHirsch 8y agoFor very sensitive freight (read NMR magnets) they already fix tiltmeters and accelerometers to the shipping crate, together with instructions to note excursions on the bill of lading when the item arrives. The superconducting wire in a modern magnet is exceedingly brittle. The various postal services do that, too, I remember seeing a documentary about the Royal Mail.
- XorNot 8y agoITER had a lot of specific shipments they did from member nations where they basically put some concrete in a box with the full range of sensor hardware and sent it to the site, explicitly to make sure that they actually could move the components.
- twic 8y agoIf they do that, they should definitely send some of the packages via Hermes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gcc9ZUz69c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gcc9ZUz69c
- noir_lord 8y agoThe only thing I'd send through Hermes is a crash test dummy, it's a cheap way to find out if it'll stand up to a 60mph head on crash with a concrete mass. If it survives Hermes it's tough enough.
- hx2a 8y agoThe artist Walead Beshty used the hazards of the shipping system to create art. He would ship glass boxes through Fedex and the damaged result would become art. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/walead-beshty-fedex-large-kraft-box-2004-fedex-155143-number-875468976073 https://www.artsy.net/artwork/walead-beshty-fedex-large-kraf...
- benj111 8y agoIn our increasingly IPed world where every copyright seemingly has to be enforced. Who would own the copyright in this instance? The postman? They 'created' it, they weren't instructed to make the piece. Surely postman 1 could sue postman 2 for damaging their 'art'? I suppose you could argue the 'artist' is akin to a photographer? But what if another artist joined fedex specifically to 'create' art. Which artist would take precedence? If one broke a box to create art, and one wanted the same box breaking to create art???
- mentos 8y agoI don’t know if I break your car windows and the unique shape increases the value of the car do I have any claim to the added value?
- wst_ 8y agoGood one. And it's not a single shipment. He's doing it for years. :) https://www.boredpanda.com/shattered-glass-sculptures-fedex-boxes-walead-beshty/ https://www.boredpanda.com/shattered-glass-sculptures-fedex-...
- mrweasel 8y agoThere are rumours that B&O did this with one of the boxes for their TVs. Supposedly it spiked when the box missing a slide in the Copenhagen sorting facility a feel 4 meter, hitting a concrete floor.
- _visgean 8y agohttps://spotsee.io/impact https://spotsee.io/impact
- magnetic 8y agoI wonder if another dimension got negatively affected, such as theft (porch pirates or the like).
- harshulpandav 8y agoTV thieves will be disappointed, but may become fit.
- yzrh 8y agoI don't think they will be disappointed or surprised. Blacks stealing bikes has been a cliché since forever.
- harshulpandav 8y agoMy karma points aren't enough for me to be able to downvote. But here's a verbal downvote.
- MertsA 8y agoAnd here's an upvote to help get you to the point where you can downvote posts like these.
- hurricaneSlider 8y agoCompletely unnecessary racist comment. Removing just that one word would have made it acceptable.
- xorgar831 8y agoBoeing does this with their seats in the factory too, they put a picture of a Lamborghini on the seats since they cost the same. EDIT: Yes, it's hard to believe a seat costs the same as a Lamborghini, that's exactly why they put the picture on it. This is mainly for the first class seats, though rows apparently cost about the same too.
- switch007 8y agoOnly certain high-end business/first seats I assume? I can't believe a standard economy seat costs $200,000+
- coder543 8y agoThe commenter above could have been saying the seats cost the same as Lamborghini seats, which is plausible, or that it costs the same to print a picture of a Lamborghini onto the packaging as it does to print a picture of an airplane seat, which is true. There are many plausible ways to interpret their statement as being correct, but I don't think they're saying any airline seats cost $200k.
- xorgar831 8y agoNo, the first class airplane seats costs $250k each. https://gizmodo.com/heres-why-a-single-first-class-seat-can-cost-300-000-1695368742 https://gizmodo.com/heres-why-a-single-first-class-seat-can-... Also it looks like a row of non-first class seats can also cost about the same: https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/travel/inside-the-dreamliner-factory-a-tour-of-boeings-1174074 https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/travel/inside-the-dreamli...
- avip 8y agoprev https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12572465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12572465
- starpilot 8y agoAlmost exactly the same threads too, including mentioning of Boeing aircraft seats.
- The_suffocated 8y agoThe effect of this trick will diminish quickly when everyone copies it. I wonder why this bike company was eager to reveal their trick if it was so effective. Perhaps the free advertisements they gets from news reports are more worthwhile?
- MRD85 8y agoOnce this trick becomes widely know then TV manufacturers will see a spike in damaged goods after they've benefited for so long.
- gumby 8y agoNot to mention all the TVs damaged by disappointed bike thieves.
- Fiaxhs 8y agoYou still need to ship things that would make sense to fit in such a big box. It's obviously the free advertising.
- leeoniya 8y agohigh quality, expensive bikes are usually designed to withstand a good amount of physical abuse and dynamic loads under a 90kg rider. i wonder what kind of damage they sustained. bent spokes? brake/shift levers?
- schrodinger 8y agoA lightweight frame is extremely strong under the loads for which it is designed (weight on the seat and bars transferred down through the wheels), but often exceedingly weak in other types of stress (E.g. an impact to the side of a tube). Especially carbon fiber.
- undersuit 8y agoMy last bike came damaged. The box with the steel frame suffered a minor hit I didn't even notice it until after my shop reported the damage. Bent the right rear dropout less than two millimeters, dropouts are where the wheel axle connects to the frame. This prevented the rear tire from inserting and had bent the location of the rear derailleur mount. Repairing wouldn't necessarily be safe and would definitely invalidate the warranty, luckily the company I bought it from sent me a new frame after I gave them proof of shipping damage.
- Sir_Substance 8y agoThis kind of thing weirds me out to be honest. I've had this kind of conversation with serious cyclists before where I've been told that it's impossible for cyclists to ride on the footpath in places because the uneven cement slabs would damage {some part of the bike I don't remember or care}. You're here telling me that a 2mm twist in part of the frame is a serious problem for attaching the rear wheel, and that it would be "unsafe" to have a skilled technician fix it (presumably by just twisting it back?). What kind of piss-poor engineering is going into high end bikes? $400 bikes don't have this problem. I've legit thrown (albeit cautiously to make sure it doesn't bounce) my bike over a 1m drop on it's side several times and it's fine other than the kickstand being a little bent. I'd never spend $1500+ on a bike that can't handle a 2mm deviation in the rear fork. Over the lifespan of the bike it's /definitely/ gonna have some part of it deviated by 2mm through normal wear and tear, so if that's gonna break it beyond safe repair then that's a pretty useless bike. Am I the crazy one here?
- ryandvm 8y agoThe king snake called, it wants its strategy back. This is a clever trick, but like the king snake's mimicry of the venomous coral snake, the long term result will surely be reduced efficacy of the markings on the bonafide item.
- justinhensley 8y agoI've always been curious about the shipping process. I have met or know 7 people who work/worked at the shipping hub in my city. I always ask them how the packages are handled. Every one of them said that they (and all of their coworkers) handle all packages on a scale ranging from rough to purposefully damaging. One guy told me how he targets boxes marked Fragile for extra abuse when he's exhausted/angry/having a bad day. I predict that a package being treated delicately throughout the entirety of it's route would be the outlier. Every package is at some point flung across a room/truck. The only question is if it is going to hit another box or a much harder surface. this is all anecdotal, but seems to fit with the stat that roughly 10% of all packages in the United States are damaged during shipping.[0] [0]: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/adriana-dunn/one-in-10-ecommerce-packa_b_4371992.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/adriana-dunn/one-in-10-ecomme... -- couldn't find a direct link to the case study.
- coygui 8y agoSimilar story happened in school as ta, if a student did something bad or annoyed the TAs, they would Target the student and give a bad or zero grade on problems that can not give a back/white answer. This is usually on marking final exams because few students will review the marking and thus few if any consequences will happen.
- wanderfowl 8y agoMuch like UPS targeting boxes, this is 100% not OK, and as a professor, if I found out my TAs were doing this, they would quickly find themselves someplace between "disciplined" and "fired".
- matz1 8y agoRight，If you can found it.
- coygui 8y agoI assume you are a responsible professor. From my experience, most professors if not every only cares about their research. Teaching is like a job not giving them any positive feedback, so why they care? And TA-ship is usually paid by school meaning no professor can fire TAs.
- iambateman 8y agoIf a bicycle in a box can be damaged in transit, one wonders about the quality of its construction.
- bitexploder 8y agoCarbon fiber bikes can absorb a lot force through the frame from riding forces, but you can bang it moderately on a tree and it just breaks. That is just something cyclists accept for the lighter weight.
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- m3kw9 8y agoNow TV damages is gonna start going up once they find out
- burtonator 8y agoPsychologist have found that people will cheat least in controlled tests when someone is watching. Even if the person can't audit them. EVEN if no one is watching and it's just a picture of an eye.
- Proven 8y ago... and read TV and similar equipment's damages increased because there's only so much careful package handling low paid employees can afford. If the shipping company properly priced its services this workaround wouldn't pay.
- ggm 8y agoOur hard drives for mainframes used to come with glass tube force exceeded indicators and ,'tipped in transit' markers. Five cent gizmos which meant you could refuse to accept or RMA.
- Scoundreller 8y agoI was very upset to find a spinning disk hard drive that I bought off a respectable forum was shipped in a padded envelope. Not even the bubble kind, but this kind: https://www.uline.com/BL_1542/Uline-Kraft-Self-Seal-Padded-Mailers https://www.uline.com/BL_1542/Uline-Kraft-Self-Seal-Padded-M... It still worked fine.
- Havoc 8y agoKinda ironic considering how much force a HDD at rest can sustain...let alone tipping.
- jon-wood 8y agoHard disks these days are much tougher than the ones used for old school mainframes, or for that matter just old school hard disks. Back in the day there was a command to park the drive heads so they wouldn’t bounce around during transit.
- donarb 8y agoYou can buy these to put on your shipments. Provides a g-force indicator if the shipment has been dropped. https://www.labelmaster.com/shop/shipping/damage-indicators/shockwatch/ https://www.labelmaster.com/shop/shipping/damage-indicators/...
- dba7dba 8y agoI've heard only item not tossed/thrown around at FedEx/UPS/etc is any box labeled as hazardous material. Every other boxes are treated equally, tossed/thrown.
- lichenwarp 8y agoI ORDERED A DAMN BIKE, NOT A TV! oh...
- Antifragile1 8y agoExpect more broken TVs now.
- qu4ku 8y agowhen all bike companies put a tv on their boxes, shipping damages of tv's went up.
- mc32 8y agoIt makes sense for them to do this, from a selfish perspective, but this is an iconic example of why we can’t have good things. If more shippers do this, handlers will just ignore the caution signs.
- paradoja 8y agoHandlers are already ignoring the caution signs, though, just not for (at least) one product, TVs.
- bentearwalking 8y agoGoing back up after this article
- JohnTHaller 8y agoI've given up being able to receive certain items via mail where I live in NYC. Amazon only ships via UPS. They smashed two $300 humidifiers in a row by bouncing them around on their sides despite the box clearly labeled to only move while upright. I'm still waiting to get a refund on one of them weeks later. They managed to break both tripods I ordered as well. I kept the second as gluing the broken bit is easier than dealing with yet another return.
- basicplus2 8y ago"Someone" put this up on HN 2 years ago.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12572465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12572465
- Causality1 8y agoWell, duh. If I have a finite amount of time I'm going to treat an electronic glass sandwich with more care than a box with a steel frame in it.
- chisleu 8y agoWe had 7 42" 4k monitors delivered and all 7 were damaged. I'm glad we were on the end of the bell curve. :D
- kowdermeister 8y agoSeven times? I would get mad as hell after the third one and go fetch it myself.
- chisleu 8y agoNo, the 7 were delivered together.
- trumped 8y agoOn my boxes, I put biological hazard symbols...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ksec 8y agoI wonder what are the % of damage from Online Shopping. Online Retailing is basically moving the cost of High Rentals to shipping / delivery.
- scotty79 8y agoThis reminds me of a company "Atheist Shoes". That had to put just "Shoes" on their boxes because it greatly reduced delivery problems in US (no effect in europe).
- spongeb00b 8y agoIn the early days of Apple when they first started shipping computers to Japan they were getting transported in refrigerated trucks. The transport company saw the logo and just assumed it was fruit. I’ve lost the source for this, I believe it was in the book “Apple Confidential 2.0”
- zeofig 8y agoPeople are AGAINST bikes because they hate and fear them #truthbombs
- sctb 8y agoWe'd appreciate it if you'd start posting substantively. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- punnerud 8y agoWhy not including an Arduino-logger with accelerometer, tilt-sensor and clock/timestamp. This way you could figure out where in the transport the rough handling is happening.
- citizenpaul 8y agoI had a large electrics/computer supplier tell me they would no longer sell my company TV's due to the fact that so many that were shipped in the southeast US arrived damaged and had to be returned. This is one of those think outside the box things that don't scale.
- TheKarateKid 8y agoI still don't understand why there has never been a push to hold carriers responsible for the goods they damage. Could you imagine dropping your car off to be repaired at your dealer/mechanic and being held responsible for anything they broke? Manufacturers and retailers should push to hold UPS/FedEx/etc. responsible if damages are above a certain metric. (If they do already, it's clearly not good enough.) The 20% damage rate for this bike company is insane.
- flurdy 8y agoOr label the box "Live Crickets"? [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/12/29/i-ordered-box-crickets-internet-it-went-about-well-youd-expect/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/12/29/i-ordered...
- dangerboysteve 8y agoAnother way to interpret this is, the bike company cheaped out on proper packaging for the bikes in the first place.
- tracker1 8y ago-1 to bycicling.com for not linking to the vendor's website. It always bugs me when the best things about the web over print isn't used appropriately... https://www.vanmoof.com/en_us/ https://www.vanmoof.com/en_us/