I have been receiving more and more packages lately delivered by Fedex SmartPost, which is a combination of Fedex and the USPS. I was completely happy with the USPS performance, but this new "smart" system has been adding at least a day and sometimes 2 days in delivery time. Is it just me or have others experienced the same thing? If so, what is it that is "smart" about it?
It's a hard question to answer without knowing what kind of mail it is. Smartpost was supposed to be a low cost way for businesses to deliver low weight mail originating with FedEx but being ultimately delivered by the USPS. From the FedEx website: I suspect the emphasis is on "less time-sensitive" hence the longer than expected delivery times. I do expect things to get a little more efficient since FedEx just won (March of this year) a $10.5B contract to move nearly all inter-city mail for the next ten years with a lot of disincentives if they screw up. FWIW
So they're gonna move all the city-to-city mail instead of the big US Mail trucks? Not looking forward to that... *EDIT* Just looked up the news story - they have the contract to move all mail between airports... It starts this October. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-23/fedex-to-fly-mail-for-postal-service-for-10-5-billion.html
The "smart" part of it is that its supposedly more efficient, as in using less resources to deliver the same amount of packages. I don't think its intended to get the packages anywhere faster, in fact I believe its intended to be slower. They are cutting out extra trips and waiting for a "full truck", or something like that ect.
They will do some trucking, as well, but a minimal amount. Only FedEx and UPS competed for this contract. Before they both had a piece of the pie; now, apparently FedEx has it all
The reason they do it is to save money, they say the last mile is the most expensive, since carriers deliver to every box daily, it saves them money by giving some of the parcels, all I know in our post office is the UPS/Fedex truck arrives around 9 or 10 in the morning, after the carriers have left for the day, sometimes they show up early and they can deliver those parcels the same day, but mostly it's the next day.
All of the above is the advert hype reasons. It is cheaper for the sender bottom line. since they have trucks criss crossing the country sometimes not full. Some of the packages sent by either fedX or ups can take up to a week/10 days longer. They are trying to do away with the local trucking companies that have had the contracts for city to city and airport to dist centers and back the contracts back when then government was corrupt most of the contracts were to the big donors for the home town Washington politco's to pass out. the gravy truck had to stop so in a flash of responsibility they gave it to the highest bidder! The post office can't fire people that can't read etc. All one can say is "May your God save us all"!
no arguments from me. every time I get something shipped by smartship it comes within a mile of my house then travels to the other side of the state for "sorting" only to return to where it started (about 1 mile away from my home) it is so so stupid it's not funny.
