[iradik]

As someone who relies on overnight 2-3 times per week, I have to say FedEx expresss (air) is a logistical wonder but unfortunately the packages still have to hit the ground to get to your door. And the ground service is a joke at least in SF. I never knew this but ground delivery drivers are not employees instead they are all independent contractors. Quite often packages come several days late. The driver will also falsely mark item as delivered or that no one was available. Customer support cannot reach anyone at the SF hub/station. I once went to the station and had to wait an hour before someone talked to me. I’ve heard they’ve had many layoffs and completely shut down the Oakland hub. Also heard UPS is much better and pays drivers better (they are union). If I didn’t get a 90% personal discount thru my work I would never use them.

[Aurornis]

FedEx has been the source of the majority of my delivery problems, too.

I remember one time I sat outside our office and waited for the FedEx truck to come up because the driver had a habit of skipping deliveries and marking them as delivered. I watched the driver go through our office complex but just not stop at the back row of buildings.

Trying to call FedEx customer support was its own frustration. The person on the phone told me some story about how they couldn’t actually get any info about the drivers or their deliveries at the end of the delivery chain. There was no interest at all in the driver who was skipping deliveries, but the person on the phone didn’t seem surprised.

[vikrantrathore]

One reason the quality of service at UPS has traditionally been stronger than at FedEx is that most UPS drivers are full-time employees rather than contractors or temporary staff. Many UPS drivers are able to earn a good living, often better than their peers at other companies including FedEx [0][1]. By contrast, some logistics companies pursue cost savings by classifying drivers as self-employed contractors, thereby avoiding social security contributions and other employee benefits. UPS’s approach reflects the vision of its founders, who believed a company cannot thrive unless it takes care of its employees.

However, the financial markets, which tend to reward short-term returns and a “winner-takes-all” mindset, have often penalized UPS for this philosophy. In recent years, to satisfy investor demands, UPS management has also turned toward cost-cutting measures. This shift coincided with leadership changes, as the current CEO came from outside the company. External leaders often emphasize sales and marketing over operations, and UPS has followed this trend. As a result, UPS, FedEx, and Amazon are now competing in a cost-reduction race, prioritizing sales growth while reducing operational staff—changes that inevitably affect service quality.

One critical element still missing from the broader logistics landscape is a truly integrated, multi-modal framework that seamlessly combines air, road, rail, and water transport to meet diverse customer needs. While rail may be less applicable in the U.S., it plays a vital role in Europe, China, Japan, and India and could be leveraged more effectively. Perhaps modern logistics theory should evolve to reflect this more holistic, global perspective.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/18/ups-drivers-can-earn-as-much...

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ups-drivers-170000-pay-benefits...

[nradov]

Rail is more applicable in the U.S. than in any of those other countries. We are the world leader in freight rail volume. Obviously it's not generally used for overnight delivery.

https://railroads.dot.gov/rail-network-development/freight-r...

As for financial markets, your blame is misplaced. This industry is tremendously price sensitive and it seems many customers are willing to accept somewhat worse reliability and service quality in exchange for lower prices. It's similar to passenger airlines in that regard.

[nkrisc]

Our UPS driver lives in our neighborhood. It’s a middle class suburban neighborhood, a nice, quiet place to live. That he can afford to live here is great. Needless to say, we get excellent UPS service. Very nice guy, too.

[Spooky23]

UPS is pretty close to this. UPS Ground will usually load stuff onto multi-modal containers and ship via rail where practical. Fedex does for east->west coast, but they seem to do alot of relayed truck shipping.

Rail is almost always cheaper, and has mostly displaced long haul trucking.

The missing link is water, and the Jones Act, which was specifically intended to destroy intra-US shipping in favor of trucking, has been incredibly successful in doing just that.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

UPS is also the largest Teamsters Union employer in the country (300k members)

https://about.ups.com/us/en/newsroom/negotiations/negotiatio...

[hhh]

Stay private as long as you can…

[Tarball10]

Might depend on location but I've always had Express packages delivered by a dedicated Express truck. Which feels wasteful sometimes when both a Ground and Express truck come down my street within the same hour.

[bdcravens]

It's touched on here:

> Unlike with Ground, which will send a driver out for the day to do pickups/deliveries, Express drivers typically have to work around time-committed packages, meeting one or a few loop deadlines for the day, doing on-call pickups, and making a certain number of required delivery attempts.

Various Express services have very hard deadlines (For example, Fedex 2nd Day AM is 10:30AM), whereas Ground/Home Delivery can be delivered at any time during it's commitment date and still be on-time. If a package is late by even a minute then the shipper is entitled to a full refund (with exceptions for things like weather), so the Express side doesn't want Ground slowing it down (plus they were two different organizations at one point, and are still pretty siloed).

(I'm the lead developer for Refund Retriever, and our primary line of business is auditing Fedex/UPS for those late refunds)

[bombcar]

Exactly, my understanding was Express were owned/crewed by FedEx, whereas Ground are contractors and vary in skill and dedication.

But apparently you can GIVE a package to either and it ends up in the right place, eventually (better to give ground to express).

[jeffbee]

I still think of "FedEx Ground" as an acquisition/rebrand and I would not be surprised to learn that the integration between Ground and Actual FedEx is still minimal.

[bombcar]

This is (or was the last time I was more directly involved) still how it was; FedEx Ground, Freight, and Express were basically three separate companies, with different portals, phones, and service levels.

UPS was much more integrated, though Freight is still a bit disconnected.

[gedy]

True, wasn't this like Evergreen?

[xtiansimon]

> “independent contractors”

I worked one Christmas for SF’s FedEx Ground 20 years ago. It’s worth noting FedEx routes are (were?) owned by drivers, who would subcontract the routes to seasonal labor like myself.

[ShakataGaNai]

I've run into the "falsely marked as delivered" thing a few times (at home, wfh). Last time I called and threw a shit fit and the rep gave me the usual run around about "how you must have simply missed the delivery" or "maybe you didn't hear the doorbell" or whatever BS. I basically said "Look, I've got a security camera on my front door. I've pulled the video at the timestamp saying I'm not home. The truck isn't even on my street, let alone at my door. What's your email address and I'll send it to you?"

They always demure saying it isn't necessary, they can't accept it, yada yada. And somehow always insist that they can't get ahold of the local distro manager, and just to wait until tomorrow (in this case this was "Attempt" 2 of 3, both of which were a lie). I had to upgrade to the nuclear response "I'm going to send this video to the corporation who sent me the item to show them that FedEx is actively lying on their delivery statuses. And I'll CC our local news team who's bored and happy to burn down corporations because they've got nothing else going on." Turns out they actually CAN get a message to the local distribution manager (no shit, I know that) who CAN call me to apologize and the truck magically finds its way to my house by the end of the day.

I'm not sure who to be ticked with or feel bad for. The drivers are typically the ones being abused, so I sort of feel bad for them. But also... stop freaking lying. Don't say you tried when you did. It wasn't even something that required signature. All you had to do was to walk the 15 steps from the truck, chuck it as hard as you can towards my porch (because... of course they do), and call it a day.

[bombcar]

Part of it is (sometimes) employees working "off the clock" where they'll mark a bunch of shit delivered, and then come back later when they're not "paid" and deliver them - because it prevents overtime and they still meet their targets.

[Greed]

Why do they do that? Are they penalized for working overtime too often?

[bombcar]

Yes. The shipper (the smaller local organization that FedEx or Amazon contracts with) turns around and hires drivers. FedEx pays the contract company per piece, the company turns around and pays the drivers per hour.

FedEx has some mystical software that helps them gauge how many employees per delivery, etc they need, but that stuff always leans toward "perfect scenarios". End result is the driver is asked to be perfect or more than perfect, never break any laws, never get delayed by ringing doorbells, etc, and still get all the deliveries done.

One easy way out for the driver is to mark everything in the computer as it is supposed to be, and then go back and fix it later (which eventually doesn't happen - there are stories about it).

UPS has something similar, but the drivers get paid overtime and are more unionized (protected) but even THEY will pull the above bullshit because there are often federal laws about truck drivers that they're skirting around.

I've seen my normal UPS driver stop by my house past 10PM near Christmas, dressed in normal street clothes and in his minivan with family, to drop off ap package that had been marked as delivered earlier in the day.

The above is why more and more of the systems require the driver to take a picture of the delivery, which of course adds time, and slows things down ...

[Spooky23]

They work for contractors -- alot of the companies that used to do stuff like newspaper and courier delivery got into this, but it varies dramatically be region.

For the lousy contractors, it's sort of an uncanny valley between UPS and a crowdsourced model like DoorDash or Laser. The employees are sketch. At work, i used them to ship WFH user equipment -- they'd do shit like deliver laptops to dumpsters at apartment complexes (complete with pictures). In NYC, the couriers park on a side street, stack packages on the street and have casual labor deliver them.

I've also had bad experiences with dropboxes where the couriers pilfer high value items - return iphones in particular. They get misdelivered to incorrect addresses on purpose.

[bdcravens]

My boss actually caught them lying one time on camera. They're incentivized to lie, since a late delivery is entitled to a full refund (for the shipper) and loss of revenue.

(I work for Refund Retriever; we audit for late deliveries for Fedex/UPS)

[alexjplant]

20 years or so ago FedEx beat the pants off of UPS in my limited experience. The only thing brown did for me [1] was play football with my Newegg packages and bust them open which, for a child spending their entire net worth on a video card, was rather disheartening. Over the years this trend reversed to the point that I actively avoid FedEx so that my package arrives in one piece at my doorstep instead of at their distribution center with a giant hole ripped in the side of it.

I wonder whether Amazon's scale forced UPS to up their game when they were shipping partners. It's also very possible that my experience is completely anecdotal.

[1] https://wanderingeye.marketing/remember-that-ad-campaign-wha...

[presentation]

I live in Japan - when I see a package was sent to me with FedEx I feel a great sense of dread.

[jccalhoun]

Fedex is the worst. I live in a house with a wooden fence all around. The sidewalk goes to the gate to get to the front door. Once fedex delivered something to my back deck where there is no sidewalk.

My parents live in a rural area. Two story house with a clear front and back door. Fedex decided to deliver a package by putting it on the storm cellar door on the side of the house.

[charcircuit]

I prefer getting packages delivered to a pickup point and doing the last mile myself. Although it restricts you to picking up during business hours I don't have to worry about something going wrong with it actually being delivered.

[iradik]

I would try that but then I’d have to change the delivery location after the shipment which can create an additional “change location” delay. It still has to be delivered to a FedEx store as well unless you are going to the station which can be a trek.

[IncreasePosts]

> have to hit the ground to get to your door.

Maybe the really high priority packages can be dropped out of the plane and delivered with a drone