Utterly OT: UPS routes

Jul 09, 2015 11 Replies

My parcel for Orleans was picked up in London by UPS yesterday. It is



370 miles from London to Orleans. However, UPS have first taken it 130 miles in the opposite direction, to Tamworth in Staffordshire. If it now goes straight to Orleans, it will have travelled 630 miles, as opposed to the original 370 miles.

I can see the advantage of having a centralised hub, but is there no better way of doing this?


You gave no indication of size/weight but Tamworth would take some beating if they intend to use air freight from Birmingham Airport.

You are probably forgetting that London airports such as Heathrow, Stanstea d and Grotwick have very strict night flying restrictions and limited slots , also land prices around London are sky high. I would guess they have plac ed their hub near to East Midlands Airport, which has mainly cargo business , night flying, is centrally located in the united kingdom and has much low er land prices. It even has excellent rail links. The road network around t here also doesn't suffer from congestion anything like London either.

Lets face it London is terrible for any kind of logistics business.

Philip

It's 11 Kgs. Roughly 1000x300x400 mm.

They may be air-freighting, although that seems unnecessary, as they have promised delivery in 3-5 working days.

Here is a piece by me not long ago on a US NG, which has a similar theme:

"I ordered something from Hauppauge, NY, USA for delivery to me in the East Anglia region of England, the bump that sticks out into the North Sea above the Thames. The package went from Hauppauge to New York City, then westwards to Cincinnati, and then eastwards to Leipzig in Germany, well to the east of me. From there, it retraced some of its route westward to England's East Midlands Airport, some miles to the west of me, and then went back east again to the city of Ipswich, on England's east coast. Now it's in a van on its way to me."

I'm surprised that they send non-urgent stuff by air. Wouldn't road be much, much cheaper?

On 09/07/2015 17:04, GB wrote: ...

That depends upon how mush space they have spare in the aircraft they are sending urgent stuff by.

After all the disruptions of the last few weeks (years? decades?) I suspect few couriers want to rest their reputation on Channel ferries and Eurotunnel.

And even if they were using road transport, it could well be cheaper to take to Tamworth for consolidation rather than operate another hub in London or the South East. Tamworth is (as others have said) very much in logisitics land.

GB scribbled

UPS made a profit of $5billion in 2014. I'd say they know what they're doing.

Proof, if it were needed, that not everyone believes in AGW :)

There was talk of a channel tunnel freight terminal at Coleshill ...

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