[Fogest]

One of the big problems I find in the shipping industry is the reliance on insurance. The idea that most packages are insured or easily replaceable. When I was a bit younger and doing some seasonal postal work in a processing plant this was the mentality. The mentality being that sometimes things will go wrong and ruin a package, but hey, whatever. Machines would sometimes destroy a package, packages would get thrown around, heavy boxes would be stacked on very small/fragile ones, etc...

Myself and many of the people I worked with all tried their best. But at the end of the day there is only so much you can do as a temp seasonal worker to prevent such things. They'd rather have a higher amount of damaged/lost items and a higher throughput.

It'd be interesting to see a competitor that made it their goal to handle packages with more care and not have this attitude. However I can't see them getting too far. They would likely have to charge more money, and any of the big companies are not going to care to pay more. They'd rather take the risk and just ship it again if it gets broken on the way. It'll end up being cheaper for them that way. The ones who lose out are the smaller businesses and individuals shipping personal items. It pissed me off when I'd see a damaged package of an item that was clearly a personal homemade thing. Something that isn't easy to just quick send another copy of.

[reaperman]

> It'd be interesting to see a competitor that made it their goal to handle packages with more care

There are "personal courier services" or "white glove courier services" where you hire a specific person to move your package from point A to point B. They stay with your package the whole time, and either carry it on a plane or drive it themselves.

It's expensive, obviously, but the service does exist.

Just like you, I'd love to see a middle-ground, scalable option exist.

[froggit]

Pharmacies use this type of personal courier service to deliver medicine filled in the store to a patient's home (since shipping prescription drugs FedEx is a great way for grandpa to run out of heart medicine). This service is often provided free of charge so it's worth checking out.

[Breza]

That's surprising. The CVS a mile from my house uses USPS Priority Mail. It might actually be cheaper if a pharmacy tech spent ten minutes driving it here.

[Nathanba]

I think there is something about the monkey brain in people that if you give them an item, they think they own it. It doesn't matter that it's just a loan or they are supposed to give it to someone else.. they think they can do whatever they want with it and anyone is lucky that they didn't mess with it. This seems to happen in the food service industry as well with the whole attitude of "be nice to us so we don't mess with your food!" The monkey brain can't help but think that it owns an item that it managed to grab. That's why I think that we need a psychological trick to make humans in package management think differently about the packages. Maybe writing something like "Fedex FAMILY Owned" on each package could do the trick. Although when I worked in a shipping facility I think people were so busy that there wasn't much "thinking" either way possible. Still we will probably just go with robots though.

[Fogest]

I think your last couple sentences is the reality. You are expected to be quick at your job and you don't have much time to think about each package. Was that a pretty heavy package you just put on top of a fragile one? That's unfortunate, but the company just doesn't give you the time to do it properly. And the company is okay with accepting that risk at the customers expense.

[scarab92]

Like most problems, it’s an externality problem.

The true cost of destroying or misplacing a parcel is often higher than the nominal value of the item inside. Sometimes it’s a sentimental good, sometimes it’s time sensitive and not having it in time results in additional costs to the recipient, sometimes the recipient spends significant time attempting to locate the package.

None of these are appropriately compensated for.

Make these companies liable for the economic cost of the goods plus $200 and they’ll start taking more care.