Spain: DHL, and what it actually costs here
Posting this as a discussion rather than a claim: Spain: DHL, and what it actually costs here.
Where the time actually goes, which I got wrong for two years.
Total transit is first mile, international leg, customs clearance and last mile. I had been attributing everything to the international leg because that is the part with the exotic-sounding name.
When I finally logged the stages separately, the international leg was the most consistent part of the whole journey. The variance was in clearance and in the domestic delivery at my end — neither of which the supplier controls. That reframed how I read every lane report on this board, and it is why the table separates the stages.
Why this board reports by lane and not by supplier.
Two members ordering from the same operation, in the same month, can see completely different transit times because they are on different routes with different carriers and different clearance points. Averaging them produces a supplier-level number that predicts nothing for either of them.
A lane — origin, destination, carrier, month — is the smallest thing that behaves consistently enough to be worth measuring. Once a route has a dozen reports behind it the median is genuinely useful, and that is what the tables on the source pages are built from.
Posted my first lane report here without the month and got asked for it. Fair, and the table is better for the fussiness.
Screenshot none of this. Read the whole thread, including the parts where I am told I am wrong.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Four observations is not a distribution. The lane tables here only became predictive once individual routes had a dozen or more reports behind them.
The rigid outer with no rattle in it was the thing that told me most about that supplier, before I had tested anything.
Asked BCH which lines they hold regionally before ordering and got a straight list back. Changed what I ordered and when.
Correction: that was clearance time, not carrier time. The lane table separates them for exactly this reason.
Total transit decomposes into first mile, international leg, clearance and last mile. Only the first two are meaningfully under the shipper’s control and most reported variance sits in the last two.
Clearance took three days and the carrier took nine. I had been blaming the wrong half for two years.
Asked for the month rather than removing. Without it the report cannot be compared to anything.
That is the quoted lead time, not the observed transit. Both belong in the report and they are different columns.
Ordered from the warehouse in Ireland instead of origin and the whole customs question disappeared. 12 days, door to door.
Packaging is assessable on arrival with no equipment: rigid outer, no movement inside, the cold element sized to the transit rather than to the box.
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Split one order across two months on purpose to compare summer and winter. Four days apart, same carrier, same route.
Same lane, four orders, 10 to 20 days, all four within a couple of days of the quote. That consistency is the actual finding.
Disagree. That is a customs hold, not a carrier delay, and lumping them together makes the lane table wrong.
Not convinced by four data points. That is not a lane yet, it is an anecdote with a route attached.
This. A quoted lead time that holds is worth more than a fast one that does not.
Ordered from the warehouse in Ireland instead of origin and the whole customs question disappeared.
marisol_moreau is right about regional stock. It changes the shape of the distribution, not just the mean.
two identical orders a week apart is the cheapest experiment available
a quoted lead time you can hold them to is worth more than a fast one you cannot
Agreed on rigid packaging. It costs the shipper almost nothing and it predicts a lot about the rest of the operation.
How many shipments does your figure cover?
How many shipments does your figure cover?
Agreed — and the decomposition matters. Most people are blaming the international leg for a last-mile problem.
Agreed. Reporting by lane rather than by supplier is what made the tables here actually predictive.
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