5 ms·

Interesting that Amazon is below (but presumably close to) 10% of UPS's volume, but only 1.3% of FedEx's volume.

pardavis 7y ago
UPS is enthusiastic about working with Amazon, but Fedex is not. Simple as that. Fedex is a gap-filling option within Amazon.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  Why isn’t FedEx enthusiastic?
  - brixon 7y ago
    Not sure if their models have changed, but FedEx is more focused on express delivery. UPS is broader on all package delivery.
    - ses1984 7y ago
      What could be more express than prime same day or next day? I guess you could say they are focused on retail express, where you can charge a poor schmuck an arm and a leg to deliver something overnight, instead of getting paid peanuts for Amazon, but for some reason I don't think that strategy is viable long term.
  - markkanof 7y ago
    In my personal experience with Fedex while living in multiple cities, it seems like they aren’t enthusiastic about residential deliveries at all. Delivering to the wrong address, throwing fragile items over a fence, putting packages in hard to find places, etc. Never had any of this with UPS and also have had really good experiences with FedEx Freight.
    - naravara 7y ago
      Interesting. In my city it's UPS that I found to be unreliable, most often by marking things as "undeliverable" without actually bothering trying to deliver them. At one point I actually got an email notice that they just tried to deliver a package and nobody was home despite the fact that I had literally been reading a book on the front porch for the past 3 hours. Nobody came by.
      - rtkwe 7y ago
        I had a similar rough patch where things were marked delivered or undeliverable for them to show up the next day almost like the delivery person was faking deliveries to shuffle their numbers around.
      - basseq 7y ago
        I've heard a lot of similar stories, and I wonder two things: 1. Is some of that volume bad addresses or poor wayfinding? Something about how the delivery person ended up at the wrong location and didn't know where to go, versus bad actors. 2. Why haven't delivery companies cracked down on this? Maybe they have, but I still hear about it a lot.
        Tomte 7y ago
        > Why haven't delivery companies cracked down on this? Maybe they have, but I still hear about it a lot. I don't know about the American package delivery space, but assuming it's somewhat resembling the German one (sub-sub-subsidiaries, work days until 11pm, because you've got a quota etc.): because it is impossible to fulfil the quota. So you get creative, fill out some "did not open door" papers and hope you can get around to delivering them the next day. And it's impossible to fulfil the quota because that's directly profit. So companies can choose between abysmal service (but still not so bad that customers would leave, because everyone is playing that game) and lower profits. They have zero incentive to "crack down".
        Majromax 7y ago
        > Something about how the delivery person ended up at the wrong location and didn't know where to go, versus bad actors. That's still a "bad actor." A driver is ultimately responsible for knowing the area they're delivering to. Wayfinding is a very convenient crutch, but if it fails and the driver has insufficient local knowledge it's still a skill failure. > 2. Why haven't delivery companies cracked down on this? Maybe they have, but I still hear about it a lot. Because their contract is with the shipper, rather than the recipient. Even a complaint from the recipient is more a PR problem than an economic one. Moreover, a recipient who accepts redelivery or goes to the depot for pickup doesn't even impose a significant additional cost on the delivery company.
  - Axsuul 7y ago
    It's better for your business to depend on many customers than on a few large customers, I'm guessing.
    - dsr_ 7y ago
      Rule of thumb: a healthy company should still be profitable after losing their largest customer. If it isn't, then the customer has way too much leverage.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    When you deal with a huge customer like amazon (or Walmart) you have to be willing to accommodate them a lot and accept low margins while you get high volume. Some companies want to do that and others don’t.
  - dsr_ 7y ago
    Because FedEx knows that Amazon is planning on being a competitor to them. Amazon Delivery (or some name similar to that) will eventually handle warehousing, fulfillment, transshipment, drop shipping, and last-mile delivery. Delivery is such a large expense to Amazon, it only stands to reason. UPS presumably believes that they can compete with that. Maybe they can. Or, possibly, they believe that they will be purchased by Amazon in the future.
    - axaxs 7y ago
      That's actually an interesting take. Before Amazon became huge, UPS already started having regional warehouses that stored tons of reseller items for fast delivery. Seems Amazon has wasted a lot of money if the end result was trying to buy out UPS.
    - StreamBright 7y ago
      To be fair, they innovated a tonn in the space so they can beat FedEx with their insane efficiency.
    - pardavis 7y ago
      Yes, it is coming (google Ship with Amazon) but UPS will be fine. In much the same way Amazon has a head start on other e-commerce firms, UPS has on Amazon. They have been customer-obsessed in one of the hardest spaces (Meatspace logistics) for literally 111 years. This kind of thing is extremely difficult to get right, and Amazon has a long, long way to go before they can compete with UPS.
      - penagwin 7y ago
        Coming? Nearly all packages in my area (Grand Rapids, MI) are now delivered by Amazon. Which is super annoying for me, I live in an apartment complex, they used to almost exclusively use USPS where I live, and they have a system where they put a key in your mailbox, etc. Amazon's deliverers are literally random people - after talking to one myself it became apparent that they barely even require much English (I'm only complaining because that makes it harder to communicate - I don't care if they speak english or not but if it's impeding their one job - delivering a package, then I'm kinda erked) Since it's never the same person, the standards are wild. Sometimes the package is left in my garage, sometimes by the front apartment door (you have to be buzzed in)[0], sometimes they're by my specific apartment's door [1]. Other times they take it to the rental office. Amazon really needs to figure this out, this isn't the only apartment complex in the city. [0] https://i.imgur.com/6GcPI7N.png https://i.imgur.com/6GcPI7N.png [1] https://i.imgur.com/9RuceQj.png https://i.imgur.com/9RuceQj.png EDIT: Also sometimes they call when they can't get inside, sometimes they just leave it outside, sometimes they don't call or ring the buzzer and just say "Couldn't deliver". It's wildly inconsistent.
  - belltaco 7y ago
    Just like how AWS started as an internal Amazon service, Amazon delivery is very likely to turn out to be a standalone competitor to Fedex and start serving non-Amazon deliveries.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jonknee 7y ago
    Would you be enthusiastic to partner up with Jeff Bezos on something like home delivery? He's going to squeeze you until you beg for mercy and that's the point he'll roll out a competing service and start to take your best customers.
- mindslight 7y ago
  The affinity isn't surprising, given that UPS seems to be transitioning into another one of those "rando in a car" delivery companies. I used to be partial to UPS - there was a time when I would jokingly refer to the 10:30 overnight delivery as my "alarm clock". After two separate bad experiences on one day (one overnight, one ground), that preference is gone. That bad experience with overnight was entirely due to their new busted-ass call center where after arguing with a voice-response robot you get to argue with an outsourced human-robot who's only ability is to tell you everything they can't do. The local terminal called me back and took care of the problem, but that level of service won't persist behind a hostile front-line phone system. The ground package was marked as delivered while actually being held over the weekend, presumably so the driver could meet some kind of metric - the same thing Lasership et al are known for. It still amazes me how eager companies are to hollow out their core competency.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    That bad experience with overnight was entirely due to their new busted-ass call center where after arguing with a voice-response robot you get to argue with an outsourced human-robot who's only ability is to tell you everything they can't do. The local terminal called me back and took care of the problem, but that level of service won't persist behind a hostile front-line phone system. That call center isn't all that new, IIRC you've never been able to call the depot directly. The only reason you got resolution from a local employee is that their own metrics would look bad if your package went missing (and you reported it).
    - mindslight 7y ago
      The problem wasn't the existence of the call center, but that it has been utterly crappified. First by a frustrating voice-interactive system that insists you figure out that you need to say you want to "track" a package (if I wanted to track a package, I'd go to the website!). Then secondly by a human-voiced robot that can only repeat the same unhelpful options you can access through other mechanized means. The issue with the overnight was that I missed the delivery because I didn't even know it was coming (I actually didn't explicitly order it...). The last time this happened (years ago) I was able to call the phone number, hit 0, describe the situation to a person, and they'd swing back around. This time I was speaking to a droid who told me my only options were to redeliver Monday or pick it up at the depot during a one hour window on Monday. I argued enough that he left a message for the depot to call me to arrange a time outside of that one hour window. When the depot called me back they communicated as a human, and agreed to simply swing back around - the level of service that I'd expect for an overnight. (I originally left the exact situation out, to avoid the inevitable "reDeLiVerINg iSN't iN tHEiR CoNTRacT!@!!" simplistic-myopic bullshit.)
- paulcarroty 7y ago
  > UPS is enthusiastic about working with Amazon That's true, most of my Amazon shipments are forwarded to UPS.
  - johnward 7y ago
    A majority of my amazon orders come by USPS via whatever UPS calls their postal handoff service. I'm not in a big city so I've never seen an Amazon delivery vehicle.
thesuperbigfrog 7y ago
That is due to Amazon's contracts with UPS to ship a certain percentage of shipment volume in order to lock-in given shipment cost rates that are below retail prices. Amazon also keeps relability and transit time metrics on all of its shippers. I would guess that UPS has historically provided more reliable delivery for lower cost compared to FedEx, thus the volume shipping agreement with UPS.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  They're not really comparable services though. FedEx focus is on time sensitiveness deliveries (over night/2-day/etc) as well as fast international deliveries. Ground is a major part of their business, but it's still secondary. UPS primary focus is ground, with overnight there to stay competitive. Does Amazon have minimum contracts with UPS? Seems like they wouldn't if they're below 10%.
- Majromax 7y ago
  > Amazon also keeps relability and transit time metrics on all of its shippers. I wonder how reliable those metrics are. I've repeatedly been told by Amazon support that I need to wait for about 24 hours before complaining about a missing package, incorrectly shown as delivered. Sometimes the package has indeed shown up later, sometimes not. But if couriers get a 24 hour grace period after marking a package as delivered, the aggregate reliability/transit metrics can't be very credible.

UPS is enthusiastic about working with Amazon, but Fedex is not. Simple as that. Fedex is a gap-filling option within Amazon.

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
Why isn’t FedEx enthusiastic?
- brixon 7y ago
  Not sure if their models have changed, but FedEx is more focused on express delivery. UPS is broader on all package delivery.
  - ses1984 7y ago
    What could be more express than prime same day or next day? I guess you could say they are focused on retail express, where you can charge a poor schmuck an arm and a leg to deliver something overnight, instead of getting paid peanuts for Amazon, but for some reason I don't think that strategy is viable long term.
- markkanof 7y ago
  In my personal experience with Fedex while living in multiple cities, it seems like they aren’t enthusiastic about residential deliveries at all. Delivering to the wrong address, throwing fragile items over a fence, putting packages in hard to find places, etc. Never had any of this with UPS and also have had really good experiences with FedEx Freight.
  - naravara 7y ago
    Interesting. In my city it's UPS that I found to be unreliable, most often by marking things as "undeliverable" without actually bothering trying to deliver them. At one point I actually got an email notice that they just tried to deliver a package and nobody was home despite the fact that I had literally been reading a book on the front porch for the past 3 hours. Nobody came by.
    - rtkwe 7y ago
      I had a similar rough patch where things were marked delivered or undeliverable for them to show up the next day almost like the delivery person was faking deliveries to shuffle their numbers around.
    - basseq 7y ago
      I've heard a lot of similar stories, and I wonder two things: 1. Is some of that volume bad addresses or poor wayfinding? Something about how the delivery person ended up at the wrong location and didn't know where to go, versus bad actors. 2. Why haven't delivery companies cracked down on this? Maybe they have, but I still hear about it a lot.
      - Tomte 7y ago
        > Why haven't delivery companies cracked down on this? Maybe they have, but I still hear about it a lot. I don't know about the American package delivery space, but assuming it's somewhat resembling the German one (sub-sub-subsidiaries, work days until 11pm, because you've got a quota etc.): because it is impossible to fulfil the quota. So you get creative, fill out some "did not open door" papers and hope you can get around to delivering them the next day. And it's impossible to fulfil the quota because that's directly profit. So companies can choose between abysmal service (but still not so bad that customers would leave, because everyone is playing that game) and lower profits. They have zero incentive to "crack down".
      - Majromax 7y ago
        > Something about how the delivery person ended up at the wrong location and didn't know where to go, versus bad actors. That's still a "bad actor." A driver is ultimately responsible for knowing the area they're delivering to. Wayfinding is a very convenient crutch, but if it fails and the driver has insufficient local knowledge it's still a skill failure. > 2. Why haven't delivery companies cracked down on this? Maybe they have, but I still hear about it a lot. Because their contract is with the shipper, rather than the recipient. Even a complaint from the recipient is more a PR problem than an economic one. Moreover, a recipient who accepts redelivery or goes to the depot for pickup doesn't even impose a significant additional cost on the delivery company.
- Axsuul 7y ago
  It's better for your business to depend on many customers than on a few large customers, I'm guessing.
  - dsr_ 7y ago
    Rule of thumb: a healthy company should still be profitable after losing their largest customer. If it isn't, then the customer has way too much leverage.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  When you deal with a huge customer like amazon (or Walmart) you have to be willing to accommodate them a lot and accept low margins while you get high volume. Some companies want to do that and others don’t.
- dsr_ 7y ago
  Because FedEx knows that Amazon is planning on being a competitor to them. Amazon Delivery (or some name similar to that) will eventually handle warehousing, fulfillment, transshipment, drop shipping, and last-mile delivery. Delivery is such a large expense to Amazon, it only stands to reason. UPS presumably believes that they can compete with that. Maybe they can. Or, possibly, they believe that they will be purchased by Amazon in the future.
  - axaxs 7y ago
    That's actually an interesting take. Before Amazon became huge, UPS already started having regional warehouses that stored tons of reseller items for fast delivery. Seems Amazon has wasted a lot of money if the end result was trying to buy out UPS.
  - StreamBright 7y ago
    To be fair, they innovated a tonn in the space so they can beat FedEx with their insane efficiency.
  - pardavis 7y ago
    Yes, it is coming (google Ship with Amazon) but UPS will be fine. In much the same way Amazon has a head start on other e-commerce firms, UPS has on Amazon. They have been customer-obsessed in one of the hardest spaces (Meatspace logistics) for literally 111 years. This kind of thing is extremely difficult to get right, and Amazon has a long, long way to go before they can compete with UPS.
    - penagwin 7y ago
      Coming? Nearly all packages in my area (Grand Rapids, MI) are now delivered by Amazon. Which is super annoying for me, I live in an apartment complex, they used to almost exclusively use USPS where I live, and they have a system where they put a key in your mailbox, etc. Amazon's deliverers are literally random people - after talking to one myself it became apparent that they barely even require much English (I'm only complaining because that makes it harder to communicate - I don't care if they speak english or not but if it's impeding their one job - delivering a package, then I'm kinda erked) Since it's never the same person, the standards are wild. Sometimes the package is left in my garage, sometimes by the front apartment door (you have to be buzzed in)[0], sometimes they're by my specific apartment's door [1]. Other times they take it to the rental office. Amazon really needs to figure this out, this isn't the only apartment complex in the city. [0] https://i.imgur.com/6GcPI7N.png https://i.imgur.com/6GcPI7N.png [1] https://i.imgur.com/9RuceQj.png https://i.imgur.com/9RuceQj.png EDIT: Also sometimes they call when they can't get inside, sometimes they just leave it outside, sometimes they don't call or ring the buzzer and just say "Couldn't deliver". It's wildly inconsistent.
- belltaco 7y ago
  Just like how AWS started as an internal Amazon service, Amazon delivery is very likely to turn out to be a standalone competitor to Fedex and start serving non-Amazon deliveries.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jonknee 7y ago
  Would you be enthusiastic to partner up with Jeff Bezos on something like home delivery? He's going to squeeze you until you beg for mercy and that's the point he'll roll out a competing service and start to take your best customers.
mindslight 7y ago
The affinity isn't surprising, given that UPS seems to be transitioning into another one of those "rando in a car" delivery companies. I used to be partial to UPS - there was a time when I would jokingly refer to the 10:30 overnight delivery as my "alarm clock". After two separate bad experiences on one day (one overnight, one ground), that preference is gone. That bad experience with overnight was entirely due to their new busted-ass call center where after arguing with a voice-response robot you get to argue with an outsourced human-robot who's only ability is to tell you everything they can't do. The local terminal called me back and took care of the problem, but that level of service won't persist behind a hostile front-line phone system. The ground package was marked as delivered while actually being held over the weekend, presumably so the driver could meet some kind of metric - the same thing Lasership et al are known for. It still amazes me how eager companies are to hollow out their core competency.
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  That bad experience with overnight was entirely due to their new busted-ass call center where after arguing with a voice-response robot you get to argue with an outsourced human-robot who's only ability is to tell you everything they can't do. The local terminal called me back and took care of the problem, but that level of service won't persist behind a hostile front-line phone system. That call center isn't all that new, IIRC you've never been able to call the depot directly. The only reason you got resolution from a local employee is that their own metrics would look bad if your package went missing (and you reported it).
  - mindslight 7y ago
    The problem wasn't the existence of the call center, but that it has been utterly crappified. First by a frustrating voice-interactive system that insists you figure out that you need to say you want to "track" a package (if I wanted to track a package, I'd go to the website!). Then secondly by a human-voiced robot that can only repeat the same unhelpful options you can access through other mechanized means. The issue with the overnight was that I missed the delivery because I didn't even know it was coming (I actually didn't explicitly order it...). The last time this happened (years ago) I was able to call the phone number, hit 0, describe the situation to a person, and they'd swing back around. This time I was speaking to a droid who told me my only options were to redeliver Monday or pick it up at the depot during a one hour window on Monday. I argued enough that he left a message for the depot to call me to arrange a time outside of that one hour window. When the depot called me back they communicated as a human, and agreed to simply swing back around - the level of service that I'd expect for an overnight. (I originally left the exact situation out, to avoid the inevitable "reDeLiVerINg iSN't iN tHEiR CoNTRacT!@!!" simplistic-myopic bullshit.)
paulcarroty 7y ago
> UPS is enthusiastic about working with Amazon That's true, most of my Amazon shipments are forwarded to UPS.
- johnward 7y ago
  A majority of my amazon orders come by USPS via whatever UPS calls their postal handoff service. I'm not in a big city so I've never seen an Amazon delivery vehicle.

thesuperbigfrog 7y ago

That is due to Amazon's contracts with UPS to ship a certain percentage of shipment volume in order to lock-in given shipment cost rates that are below retail prices. Amazon also keeps relability and transit time metrics on all of its shippers. I would guess that UPS has historically provided more reliable delivery for lower cost compared to FedEx, thus the volume shipping agreement with UPS.

djsumdog 7y ago
They're not really comparable services though. FedEx focus is on time sensitiveness deliveries (over night/2-day/etc) as well as fast international deliveries. Ground is a major part of their business, but it's still secondary. UPS primary focus is ground, with overnight there to stay competitive. Does Amazon have minimum contracts with UPS? Seems like they wouldn't if they're below 10%.
Majromax 7y ago
> Amazon also keeps relability and transit time metrics on all of its shippers. I wonder how reliable those metrics are. I've repeatedly been told by Amazon support that I need to wait for about 24 hours before complaining about a missing package, incorrectly shown as delivered. Sometimes the package has indeed shown up later, sometimes not. But if couriers get a 24 hour grace period after marking a package as delivered, the aggregate reliability/transit metrics can't be very credible.