We’re not turning left anymore

With $1 billion in IT spent per year, nearly 5,000 IT staff, 384,000 employees, 15 mainframes, 8,700 servers, 250,000 PCs, 2,700 networked sites, 474 terabytes of storage, 500 applications, 10 million tracking requests per day, 88,000 vehicles, 90,000 handheld devices and the ninth largest airline, and this is the best efficiency idea they come up with?

Is this the best you can do? please tell me your kidding UPS. Look HERE to see one problem that could use some solving. If you thought I was kidding about UPS (REALLY) not wanting to make left-hand turns click HERE

if you’re too lazy to click through that last link here is an excerpt from Jenn @ http://blog.everydayrandomness.net

“About a week after I found out about the “no left turns” I started noticing the driver parking in the middle of the road. It wasn’t our normal driver, and he was delivering something to my Grandparent’s house, so I thought maybe he just doesn’t know if he can turn around in their driveway. There wasn’t any traffic on the roads, so no biggie.

“A few weeks later I saw the same guy do it again, and that kind of pissed me off because we live on a very dangerous road. Here was this huge UPS truck parked in the middle of the lane in a blind curve!

“We’ve got a huge driveway and plenty of room to turn around, so screw how much gas UPS thinks they’re saving. How is it good to save gas if you’re creating a DANGEROUS situation? Making a left turn into my driveway, then circling around to pull out of the driveway is nothing compared to what’s going to happen when someone comes around that curve with a UPS truck parked in the middle of the lane!

“This morning I decided I was going to call UPS to file a complaint, but guess what! It’s virtually impossible to get through to anyone for a complaint! There’s no option with the 1-800 #. There isn’t even a “general questions” or similar. I finally had to go through the option to check tracking before I got a human on the phone, and even then I was told they didn’t know how to contact for complaints.”

Your package that absolutely, positively has to be there is an environmental nightmare.

You probably didn’t know that you shipments take the scenic route on their way to its final destination. The reason I say this is, if you’re like most businesses, you’re supporting or contracting with either FedEx, UPS or DHL.

Without a doubt, these large shipping companies have been wildly successful and have revolutionized global commerce. Yet they waste time and resources with their routing processes. First Global Xpress believes that their hub-and-spoke shipping system is antiquated and not the most efficient way to ship internationally. It’s most certainly not the most efficient way for the environment.

What is a hub-and-spoke system?
The integrators (FedEx, DHL and UPS) use a tonnage-driven, hub-and-spoke system that “integrates” the shipments that they collect from all over the United States. The integrators combine all of these shipments at huge hub locations to be sorted and shipped out to the hub closest to its final destination. For FedEx, an example of this would be Memphis, Tenn., which is the sorting hub it uses on all eastbound international shipments. It’s also the hub for all of the United States.

I would like to share with you the tracking for a test shipment that I sent via FedEx a couple of days ago. The shipment originated in New York City and was destined for London. (See below for tracking.)

NEW YORK, NY
7:51 PM
Package data transmitted to FedEx

NEW YORK, NY
8:23 PM
Picked up

NEWARK, NJ
11:32 PM
Left origin

MEMPHIS, TN
Mar 26, 2008 11:54 PM

MEMPHIS, TN
1:03 AM
Arrived at FedEx location

That seems odd. I’m shipping from NYC to England. Why’s my package going west to Tennessee before going east to London? How much fuel does that waste?

In the next post, we’ll take this mileage and show you what your carbon footprint is for both shipping via a direct route from NYC to London, as well as by indirectly shipping through the integrators’ hubs.