Forum Moderators: buckworks
Yesterday an employee got hassled for dropping off packages at the loading dock instead of at the customer service counter. I'll be talking to a supervisor soon, but dropping off at the loading dock was never a problem in southern CA. I get the feeling they're going to try and make us wait in line every day with 5 huge bags of sorted, postaged packages.
I may be able to get permission to drop off at the loading dock, but I don't know how to speed up delivery so I'm considering moving the operation to a better location. Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland Oregon, and Salt Lake City Utah are all a direct flight away from the local (very small) airport. Which would be best for a distribution center? Portland would be nice because we wouldn't have to pay sales tax, but geographically it's kind of in the corner of the country. Then again, would we still have to pay sales tax in California since I live and work here? Salt Lake City looks like it could be the most geographically ideal but I'm not sure.
How would you guys proceed?
They will arrive tomorrow, collect your packages, and you can relax.
Provide your customers with a delivery-confirmation number. Their ultimate beef is with the government, who provides the Priority or Express service. If it becomes an issue, you have other alternatives.
Are you using mailing software? Using a delivery confirmation? Or are you getting there to drop packages off in the afternoon? At my post office, they send stuff out to the distribution center at anywhere between 2-4, and that means anything that comes in after that doesn't go until the next day--this might be what's going on with yours.
I ship out of a small town in upstate NY. Everything has to go by truck up to Rochester before it goes anywhere else in the country, but my stuff all gets wherever in 2-3 days. I have 2 day priority mail to Berkeley, CA, from here regularly.
Is there some reason why your mail might be being stopped and examined by the powers that be? This could also be slowing it down.
You standing in line doesn't do them any good if your packages already have postage or if you have 50 million of them.
There are reasons why postal work is a high-stress occupation. Chances are they don't mean to antagonize you. :) you just need to work out a solution with them.
I would visit usps.com, click "Schedule A Pickup", click the "Carrier Pickup" option, and sleep soundly.
Unfortunately, there are two problems with that.
First of all, UPS delivers at 11:30AM and USPS picks up at 1:00PM. That means there isn't time to get a received purchase order out in the same day with USPS pickups. Dropping off at the post office can happen as late as 5:00PM.
The second problem is my business's mailing address is at a separate location than my warehouse. It's one of those mailbox places. The return address on the packages matches the mailing address and not the warehouse address. I gave a load of packages to my carrier once and he told me the next day that he got in trouble for accepting the packages because the return address didn't match the address he picked them up from. Again, in southern CA I did that for years with a PO box return address without a problem.
Are you using mailing software?
Using a delivery confirmation?
At my post office, they send stuff out to the distribution center at anywhere between 2-4, and that means anything that comes in after that doesn't go until the next day--this might be what's going on with yours.
The local mailbox store owner is a friend and we've talked at length about how slow USPS stuff is getting out of town. It's definitely a universal problem here. It's a very, very slow town in general.
You may also want to speak with your local Postmaster and establish some rapport.
We deliver directly to the BMC (Bulk Mail Center) though and that may make a difference.
[usps.com...]
Are those the ideal drop-off locations for packages? Does dropping off at one of those locations mean packages could reach their destination sooner?
At our PO, the Priority mail truck goes to Mankato (nearest dist center) right around 2:30. The PO is open til 4:30...priority packs dropped off by then will get the postmark of the current day but won't go out til the morning Priority truck...I think regular mail goes out at 5:00. In So Cal, if it was a busier/bigger community, it is possible they had more trucks leaving at various times of day. My guess is that you're missing the priority truck. I think many smaller POs probably have a small volume of priority mail and one truck may make stops in several towns, and has to be in Mankato by 6. Just speculation based on what I know about our PO.
Finding the postmaster is easy, USPS has a list of them on their website, you can search by city. It will give you the name. He/She works when everyone else works. In our little town, he works the counter with the others. Just ask for him/her. Be pleasant and ask what the system is. Refrain from comparing the new PO to the old one...I'm not sure where your current/past locations were but it may be apples and oranges. I'm not a Californian, but nothing irritates folks in small-town MN like having their government services compared to Minneapolis. Maybe if they processed millions of pieces of mail a day, they'd have a truck leaving every hour. But they don't. :)
I can't imagine that it would be advantageous to pack up the operation (employees?) yet again and move it, rather than to learn the system where you're at and work within it.
We have even been able to make arrangments for USPS to come two or three times a day - once in the morning to drop-off mail, once or twice in the afternoon to pickup items (depending on season/volume).
(We could have done pick-up, but there are other errands he has to run in town - bank, pay bills, etc. -nothing like year-end tax writeoff desperation!)
Is there a way to look up a list of Regional Distribution Centers? Are those the places mail is gathered from the surrounding areas for shipment around the country? If so, maybe that would make them ideal dropoff locations for Priority Mail. Maybe I could drop off there as late as 5PM or 6PM and still make the same day's shipment out. I'm guessing the local RDC is about 10 minutes from here in the next town.
Of course, if I could get USPS to pick up around 4PM or 5PM from my location, that would be ideal. People have actually been able to get them to pick up at a specific time? I think they usually charge $12.50 for that.
Do you know in fact how much extra time it takes to move the mail from the front room to the loading dock, and if this extra time matters to the departing truck? (the mail may get to the dock sooner, but the truck leaves at the same time).
If you are considering gathering more info. to calculate the question above you could be obsessive/compulsive. What this means is that you spend all your energy on never ending details and things take longer then they would otherwise take and you never arrive at a solution and you eventually get sidetracked.
For each option you mention above it's never optimal. Oregon is ok because there is no tax, but it's in the corner etc. One city is closer to the a airport then another, are you forgetting to factor in the traffic? the time of day for the delivery? the gas price? routing of the mail from local to state distribution centers? is the distribution center in that state open 24 hrs? do the employees there drink decaf? My list could go on forever.
Some customers are never satisfied and you can't win them all. The important thing is to make a reasonable attempt and keep the majority of people satisfied.
Before, packages usually reached their destination in 2 days, and sometimes 3. Now, it's 4-5 days minimum and sometimes much longer. It's really ridiculous for a "2-3 day" service.
First of all, UPS delivers at 11:30AM and USPS picks up at 1:00PM. That means there isn't time to get a received purchase order out in the same day with USPS pickups. Dropping off at the post office can happen as late as 5:00PM.
Before moving your location you should perhaps check where the bottleneck is. Where are the parcels this whole time?
My guess,too, would be that the truck to the next large USPS hub already has left when you bring in the parcels at 5pm at the loading dock and your parcels sit at your local post office until next day.
I had a similar problem for some time with the postal service here in Germany (DHL). First I would drop off the parcels at the local post office. However the parcels always took longer than expected. Then I found out the reason: I dropped of the parcels at 4 pm. However the truck bringing the parcels from the post office to the central DHL hub for my area already picked the parcels up at the post office at 3:30 pm. So I brought in my parcels at 3 pm from now on.
When the amount of parcels rose I started using the pick-up service. However to my surprise it now took sometimes 2 days longer until the parcel arrived. I asked the guy who picked up the parcels where he took them: It turned out he was simply taking them to the local post office after his tour. Long after the truck to the DHL hub had left. And sometimes he would even drive them around for one more day in his pickup van.
I then contacted my DHL representative and now the truck that takes the parcels from the post offices to the central hub picks up our parcels. So they arrive at the central hub two hours after pickup and are usually delivered the next day.
We are to drop our packages off at the front counter without waiting in line and without sorting them into California/Non-California as we've done in the past. They say this is so they can check the weight and scan each one into the system. I see from the Delivery Confirmation info that they are indeed scanning each one. Also, the last batch was entirely delivered within 3 days so that's great. Next I need to find out how late we can drop off and make the day's truck.
Bad news: I just tracked the last large batch of packages which were dropped off at 3:30PM on the 7th and half of them haven't even been delivered yet (it is the night of the 12th). I'll give them a couple more days to get delivered and then I'll bring this data (nicely) to the postmaster.
Second, all post offices are required to be empty of all mail shortly after the 5 PM closing time. If there is a truck leaving at 1 PM there will always be another one leaving shortly after 5 PM.
Last, with the shipping rates going up this Sunday 1/18/09 switching to the commercial rate by using pre-paid labels saves a min of .15 a package.
The savings on postage more than pays for the use of all the extra tie ins.
I just did some reading about the automation discount and it seems to hinge on having the required barcode on your label, which mine do since they're received directly from the USPS servers.
[pe.usps.com...]
I just spoke to the USPS Webtools guys and they say the discount only applies to Click N Ship, but the guy I spoke to said I should check with the local post office too.
Hmmm, I wonder if I could link my current system to Endicia via an API....
"Information Based Indicia (IBI) postage meters (in conjunction with an approved shipping label that includes a confirmation services barcode with a postal routing code)"
I should have been doing this for years. With the USPS rate API, all you have to do is change the service from PRIORITY to PRIORITY COMMERCIAL.
[edited by: Tonearm at 12:53 am (utc) on Jan. 16, 2009]
[en.wikipedia.org...]
[usps.com...]
I have the Pitney Bowes B700 and it seems to print a single-dimensional indicia as opposed to the 2-dimensional indicia which contains the following information in the bar code:
"amount of postage, origin zip code, destination, mail class, weight, confirmation/tracking numbers"
This is not good. My postage and labeling processes are done completely separately and there is no way to inform the postage meter of the destination zip code, mail class, weight, and tracking number without manual entry into the meter.
Conard: all post offices are required to be empty of all mail shortly after the 5 PM closing time
Not if they have a 24/7 drop off box
[endicia.com...]
