Has anyone ever actually followed their shipment on hte USPS site besides me? I can see why their price goes up year after year. They sometimes don't update the log until right before it arrives, I had it a few times where it stayed in one place for 4 days, then suddenly made a 200 mile trip, through a second distribution center and the local Post Office, and then get delivered in 6 hours. My current package that is coming from California and going to Indiana, is currently in Ohio.

I can see that all the extra work in shipping is what eats up the cost. If they stopped in Indianapolis at the distribution center there(which you pass through on the way to Cincinnati Ohio) , and dropped it off(along with other Indiana packages) then continued to Ohio, would have saved a bit on the gas costs of the truck, and labor for moving the box....again. They need to upgrade their logistics, IMHO.

If it is coming by ground after reaching the States, stopping in Ohio makes sense. USPS runs mostly on a grid system.

Fedex Smartpost is the worst. It's a system that uses Fedex to deliver packages to the local post office, where they are then distributed by the carrier.

I tracked an Amazon shipment just before Christmas. I live in New England, and the item was shipped from Florida. It arrived overnight in the local Fedex distribution center (which is 6 miles from my house!) and then it sat there for 5 days. It was then transferred to a USPS facility 90 miles away, in another state, and then shipped back to my local post office. It finally arrived two days later than originally promised.

USPS updates infrequently. Your best bets are check for the date of delivery, and then just to make sure it wasn't delayed daily.


USPS will deliver with your regular mail, so you should have an idea of what time it gets there.


I do all my shipping through the post office. Domestic and overseas.

How does it make sense to drive past the Indianapolis Indiana distribution center, to go to Cincinnati Ohio Distribution center, when coming by truck from California? Even with a Grid system, the Indianapolis Distribution center is more centrally located. If it stopped in Illinois, or Kentucky, or even Texas I could understand a grid system, and swapping from one leg to another on the journey. It's the lets drive 5 hours past another distribution center to then handle the package again and send it back to the distribution center that was already passed that doesn't make sense.

It's like having your employer giving your paycheck to your landlord, who then in turn gives it to your insurance company, who then gives it to you so you can put it in the bank to pay your rent, and insurance. Oh, and you were in the same room as your landlord when your boss handed him the check.

I should also tell of the time that I sent to packages to the exact same address, on the exact same day, at the same time(I paid at the same time but they were both scanned within a couple of minutes of each other) . One package went almost straight to the location, the other went on a tour of the United States and went through 3 distribution centers. The packages used the same shipment method(first class) were both about the same dimensions (one was slightly larger than the other) , and had similar weights. The volume was to large to put the stuff all in the same box.

Megatron, if it came from CA, it did *not* go to Ohio by ground, it flew.

Flying to Ohio takes 4 days? That makes it worse, as I can drive to California in that time. That and the current package is coming USPS Retail Ground.

I will be honest, I thought geographically Indianpolis was further south and east of where it actually is. Actually one of the cities in the US that gets me confused how it relates to other major metropolitan areas.


The only other explanation I can think of is if Indy was hit by the snow storm that came out and pounded the east coast. It's a bit out from the mid-atlantic states, but it could have started there? But then I see this:

Which makes no sense.


That's why I don't use the USPS for parcels unless I'm using Fedex Smartpost. Any shipping guy worth their salt knows that the privately owned carriers have always been better about it. Well for most places: the USPS today is still the only nation-wide service that can claim letter and package delivery to every residence and business in the United States.


Though when it comes to Air services, UPS and Fedex have better networks. So if your plan was to save money by using the USPS, using it as a parcel service is not as good as it seems, and your best bet would be to use the privately owned carriers. If it's a hard to reach destination, you use something like Smartpost (Fedex service, not sure what the UPS equivalent is) so that it travels to the area by air in their planes, but once on the ground it gets handed to the USPS for delivery (which btw is the only service that delivers packages on Sunday).

If it went by ground, there'd be multiple stops and scans. I can drive from CA to PA in 3 days. It's approximately 40 hours to home. Nonstop 2 days.


They flew it to Ohio, and when they tell you X days, they'll often flat out *hold* it to prevent it from being early.


UPS does this too. I'll have packages spend 36 hours in a distro center four hours away.

A lot of it depends on which shipping service is being used. Things like FedEx SmartPost can have some weird routing going on. Priority Mail is usually pretty fast and direct, and the tracking is much better than the first class parcel or partner services.

Anyway, shipping logistics is a strange science. It might seem nonsensical at times, but there's usually a method to the madness. Sometimes packages seem to travel farther than they need to, but there's more to it than distance as far as costs to the shipping carrier. Keep in mind that your package is traveling on the same vehicles as lots of other packages going to different places. Making a detour to reduce the distance that a few packages travel might actually be more expensive than using a route that goes past the destination, followed by a short backtrack to the destination on a different vehicle that's making a trip in the other direction. Likewise, waiting for the next available vehicle taking a more direct route might actually delay the package more than immediately loading it onto a vehicle taking a less direct route. I know it seems counter-intuitive at times, but it's likely that they've optimized the route correctly to keep their costs down. It's just not necessarily as straightforward as moving every individual package the shortest distance possible.

That said, sometimes things like that can happen because a mistake was made by a package handler somewhere, and the package didn't get unloaded at the correct stop...or something similar.