[Question] EMS — what am I missing here
Genuine question, and the title is the question: EMS — what am I missing here.
Posted my first lane report here without the month and got asked for it. Fair, and the table is better for the fussiness.
Clearance took three days and the carrier took nine. I had been blaming the wrong half for two years.
The rigid outer with no rattle in it was the thing that told me most about that supplier, before I had tested anything.
Ask me anything specific. Anything general I will probably get wrong.
best — the order this archive was captured in
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.
The regional stock question, and why it is the first thing I ask now.
If a supplier holds the line you want in a warehouse in your own region, your order is a domestic shipment. No international leg, no clearance, a shorter cold exposure and a lead time in days rather than weeks. If they do not, it is an international shipment however it is described at checkout.
So the question is not "how fast do you ship" but "which lines do you hold in regional stock, and is the one I want among them". It is one email, the answer is usually a list, and it changes what to order and when — especially in summer.
Disagree. That is a customs hold, not a carrier delay, and lumping them together makes the lane table wrong.
Asked HJ which lines they hold regionally before ordering and got a straight list back. Changed what I ordered and when.
Four observations is not a distribution. The lane tables here only became predictive once individual routes had a dozen or more reports behind them.
Same. SWB quoted 5 days on my lane and it landed at 7, which is exactly what you want from a quote.
Push back: comparing a July transit with a February one on the same lane is not a comparison.
Not convinced by four data points. That is not a lane yet, it is an anecdote with a route attached.
Careful — the supplier does not control the last mile and most of your variance is in it.
a lane with four reports is not yet a lane
Yes — median rather than best case. The fastest anybody ever got is not a plan.
Same lane in a different season for comparison?
Merged into the standing thread for that lane so the reports accumulate in one place.
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What was the packaging like on arrival?
Split one order across two months on purpose to compare summer and winter. Four days apart, same carrier, same route.
Agreed on rigid packaging. It costs the shipper almost nothing and it predicts a lot about the rest of the operation.
That is a packaging observation, not a transit observation. Worth posting, worth separating.
ask which lines are actually held in the regional warehouse
Kept a spreadsheet of quoted versus actual across a year. The quote held; the variance was all in the last mile.
Merged into the standing thread for that lane so the reports accumulate in one place.
transit_variance is right about regional stock. It changes the shape of the distribution, not just the mean.
- 1Merged into the standing thread for that lane so the reports accumulate in…9 comments in this branch · started by u/transit_variance