Late Deliveries and Misplaced Blame

Many are complaining this week – mostly the typically anti-business leftists, who can never resist a chance, legitimate or not, to attack the private sector – because some presents weren’t delivered by Christmas. Some are even calling for class-action suits, perhaps because they think that this certain type of predatory lawyer needs a stimulus program.

Now, it should be obvious that there’s no conspiracy by the private sector to sadden spouses and children or to defraud businesses. A lot of orders were placed at the last minute, more than the transportation network could handle. We could leave it at that.

But as long as some leftists are indeed trying to make it a political issue, let’s consider the real, legitimate political facts behind some of the various components to this issue, shall we?

As Christmas approached, and it became evident that carriers’ projections had been low – so there would be much more product to deliver than some of the carriers had staffed for – the carriers were limited in how many people they could put on overtime. Most drivers and loading/unloading personnel always put in a good deal of overtime in December, and most would have been willing to put in even more overtime than planned in those last couple of days, but union work rules and federal Hours of Service regulations banned it.

After all, you can’t just hire new people for two or three days. You can hire seasonal employees for four to six weeks, as the retail industry does, but not for the last three days before Christmas. These are jobs that often require licenses, bonds, hazmat training, and experience in driving trucks, in operating forklifts, in processing manifests and bills of lading, in designing stowage plans to keep dangerous cargo separate… at the busiest time of the year. Any additional hours you add simply MUST be with experienced staff doing overtime. This makes it a severe challenge.

Now, if carriers’ and their employees’ hands are tied, by federally-enforced (Surface Transportation Board, Department of Labor, etc.) union contracts and federally-mandated Hours of Service Rules (Department of Transportation), you simply can’t blame the carriers. They were willing, but federal government rules held them back. To the extent that this issue is anybody’s fault, it’s easy to see whose fault it was.

The domestic transportation industry is incredibly efficient. There are firms that specialize in large shipments of truckload size (roughly 7.5 feet by 7.5 feet by 40 to 53 feet in length). There are other firms that specialize in smaller shipments (roughly a few boxes to a few pallets at a time) that get consolidated together to share trucks. And there are other firms that specialize in still smaller shipments, of courier pouches, or just a small box or two each.

These three groups of businesses, known as FTL, LTL, and Small Package, make up thousands of companies from coast to coast, using air, road, and rail in the most efficient way possible, as they meet the needs of both business and personal customers, year in and year out, at incredibly low prices.

There was a time when this sector wasn’t that efficient, when trucks, trains and planes tended to be a third empty, or even half empty, but no more. Modern commerce, along with modern transportation management software, have enabled these carriers to optimize their “equipment” – the industry’s term for their trucks, trains, and planes – much as containerization enabled the international oceanfreight industry to optimize theirs.

The invisible hand of the free market has enabled our transportation industry to plan their equipment needs appropriately. Carriers now have the right number of trucks, planes, and boxcars for their typical needs throughout the year; they are able to deliver a package cross-country – for just a few dollars! – due to this wonderful efficiency, because for eleven months of the year, their business averages out to be reasonably predictable.

December changes things, however. All of a sudden, from the day after Thanksgiving onward, the transportation business is jolted by a huge spike in home deliveries, which are far more labor-intensive than typical deliveries. They’re not complaining; business is business, and they’ve adjusted to manage it, but every year, as online ordering grows proportionately, the final weeks before Christmas become more and more of a challenge.

Remember, these carriers only have so many planes, and each plane only has so much room. As December 25, approaches, virtually all of them are full, every year.

Every UPS and FedEx cargo flight in the last week was full; they couldn't take any more cargo. It's like jamming your car full of stuff when you're moving, so there's only room for the driver; there’s no room to fit anything else, so you need to make another trip... The same goes for most of the trucks, in most of the densely populated trade lanes, wherever there were issues in those final pre-Christmas days.

Now, if the carriers had more and bigger planes, and more 53' trucks instead of mostly 20' trucks, as well as more people, the same companies could have moved more cargo. But they have the number and sizes of vehicles that they need for the amount of business they have all year long.

If we had a growth economy, they WOULD have more and bigger equipment, but we're still stuck in a seven-year recession that started when the Democrats took over after the 2006 elections. This flat-lined economy has flattened the transportation industry just like it's flattened the rest of the country. As our population increases, the number of transportation companies has shrunken, and the national driver shortage has only worsened.

In a boom economy, there would be more year-round commerce, justifying more transportation companies, more equipment, more people to man those deliveries. But this isn’t a boom economy. And whose fault is that?

Some people are wonderful at shopping all year long; these rare, organized souls present no strain on the transportation sector whatsoever. Others begin on Black Friday, or Cyber Monday, and do their shipping in early December; these modern shoppers have driven the transportation industry’s December planning for a decade or more, and the transportation sector handles their business, too, without strain.

And there have always been people who shop at the last minute, either because they must, or because they can… often, nowadays, because they have to work two or three part time jobs to pay the bills and be able to buy gifts.

Lots of today’s last-minute shoppers used to be in those earlier two groups, but they now have to wait for the final sales so they can afford to shop… because just as the macro economy has changed, so too have their personal micro economies changed. The person who was happy to buy at full price or 25% off a decade ago is now waiting for a 50% off sale, or better, before he or she can afford to buy for everyone on the list.

Just as the Left is telling us that part time work, high fuel prices, and previously unimaginable levels of unemployment are “the new normal,” so too is last-minute shopping, as people wait for the last paycheck and the best deals before they can buy presents.

Did they think that all these years of unemployment, low raises, and huge inflation in food, gasoline, and other necessities wouldn’t have an effect? Did they think – when people stop doing better economically every year, and instead, do worse and worse – as taxes rise, utilities skyrocket, and career advancement plans are frustrated by an obamacare-saddled economy – that these people wouldn’t be more desperate for deals than they used to be?

Of course people wait more for sales, and therefore do more last minute shopping, needing rush delivery at the end more than ever before, creating a growing burden on a transportation sector that’s not growing at the same pace, because the rest of their clientele – the American business sector, year-round – has remained so sluggish for so long.

Economic contraction, inflation, energy shortages, hiring freezes. Again, now, whose fault is all this?

I do feel sorry for people whose presents are late. A couple of mine (luckily just a couple) didn't arrive before Christmas either, though I was impressed at how fast a couple DID arrive (because I honestly admit that I did order several things too late).

My basic point is this: don't blame the transportation folks, because they do work hard, and they do a great job, considering the fact that some 80-plus percent of their personal deliveries all happen in the last two weeks of the year.

You can’t make an employee work more hours than the law allows him to work, even if both he and his employer are willing. You can’t fit more cargo in a truck or plane than there’s room for, when the company has all the equipment space that the rest of the year’s volume supports. You can’t blame people for shopping late when their economic condition mandates that they look for that last sale and wait for that last paycheck.

But DO blame the people responsible for these conditions. Do blame the rotten management by Washington, D.C., the taxes and regulations that have created this miserable environment. And feel free to share that blame with Springfield, Sacramento, Albany, and all other such meeting places for miscreants and fools.

Destructive legislation and strangling regulations do have consequences. And sometimes, those consequences hit home.

Most of these miscreants' countless other mistakes cause much more serious destruction than the late delivery of some online purchases. Be glad that in this case, it was just a gift or two being a couple days late, perhaps causing people to reflect a little bit more on the real meaning of Christmas, from which the gift culture is mostly just a distraction anyway.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based Customs broker and international trade compliance trainer. His columns appear regularly in Illinois Review.

Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the byline and IR URL remain included. Follow John F. Di Leo on Facebook or LinkedIn, or on Twitter at @johnfdileo.

http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2013/12/late-deliveries-and-misplaced-blame.html

Blumenthal (and others) will just craft some legislation that requires the courier carriers to be fully staffed with union workers ALL YEAR, just so they have enough people at Christmas. Shipping costs will skyrocket. We will be told it is for our own good; that we had inferior shipping service before, and now we will have good shipping service. I can see this play out....

(Seven years ago, this would never have crossed my mind.)

I agree. Granted that UPS, DHL, Fedex, and so on are businesses, and we are paying for a timely delivery, it doesn’t always mean its ALWAYS going to happen. Bad weather, excess volume to move, mechanical issues can happen despite efforts to prevent or minimize them. I don’t take for granted the fact that 99% if the time things I order arrive within the estimated delivery window. I do notice the USPS has a pretty high fail record with me.

While I do my shopping weeks and months in advance, *if* a merchant is advertising ‘delivery by Christmas’ or some such promise then they had best be prepared for bad feedback at or worse if it doesn’t happen.

If you tell me you are going to do such and such a thing by such and such a time, I don’t want to hear excuses “Oh it got lost in the mail’, or ‘ups/usps screwed up’.

No boss I’ve ever had has been in the slightest interested in any reason what was promised didn’t happen, and the customer is the boss.

The short of it - never, ever, ever promise something unless you allow enough time and resources to make sure it happens in even a worse case scenario. PERIOD.

Pretty cut and dried - if the customer paid for it with the expectation they would have it by Christmas then it’s up to the merchant to get it there by then; if it means that the owner has to throw it in a van and deliver it (like my boss and I had to more than once when a delivery company flaked out on us!) that’s the breaks. More than once I was told- not asked- to get in the van and deliver an item (mattresses and couches) even as I was getting ready to leave work. On the day before thanksgiving once!

All you got in life is your word.

RedStateRocker, I’m sorry I failed in trying to explain this... let me try it a different way:

For the most party, this isn’t an issue of people contracting with the delivering carrier, receiving the various conditions and warnings, and then disregarding them.

It’s a matter of people buying from a retailer, and the retailer contracting with the delivering carrier, but the retailer not putting all the conditions and warnings on the online store’s website because there isn’t room or the retailer doesn’t think it’s that important because it’s never gone too far wrong before.

The carriers have plenty of good, legitimate warnings for their customers. I’ve contracted with enough of them over the years to know that, for the most part, they put the information out there quite clearly. But it takes a lot of space for all that text, and the retailers don’t have room for it on their cramped websites. So the retailer says “want it in two days? click here!”

Should the retailers be more careful to fill it with details? Maybe... but customers should also be a bit more sophisticated. We are expected to know the background behind radio and TV commercials, because nobody expects them to fit all the backstory into a 15 second spot...

We really need to get to that same point - of normal, “buyer beware” common sense - in the world of online retail.

JFD

I see.

I still think that it’s an issue for the retailer. Lack of space to explain something or assumption that the customer is aware of factors not explicated clearly and readably is simply wrong. If you have a link on your website that says “order now for delivery by Christmas” then you had darned well be sure the thing can get there by Christmas or be prepared for hell to pay. A rule of retail used to be that an unhappy customer told 10 people; now with Yelp and Facebook it’s many more times than that.

I know if I order something and pay for delivery by X-date I have not the slightest interest in any reason short of a 9/11 level event if it doesn’t happen by that time; no excuses and no more mercy than I ever recieved (that is, ZERO) in my time in retail, delivery and as an AV tech.

Still waiting on a priority mailed package guaranteed to be here by Dec. 24 and another package with no promised delivery (Amazon.com purchase) that was said to be shipped two weeks ago.

Last week, given the weather delays and the Christmas rush, I wasn't concerned.

If neither are here today or tomorrow, I'll have to start the process of trying to find both, but I'll be very surprised if they don't show up.

In all these years, I can't remember when something for or from me was lost in the mail. I wish other things in life worked that well for me.

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