advice please - Device to track how a delivery company handles our parcels

Boardburner2:
I am not sure this data would be useful though.

Even if you can pinpoint the problem area would the courrier do anything about it.
Hand sorting happens sometimes using part time staff.

the point is that there are multiple forces at work.
held at 4 ft and dropped so it would impact flat is one force
held at 4 ft on the side and impact flat is another force and would require different packaging to protect
held at a 45deg and impact on a corner would be yet another wild guess of what is happening in the actual journey from shipping to delivery.
if half of the impacts are from flat bottom, then a single layer of bubble wrap on the bottom could reduce damage by 50%.
if half the impacts are flat sided, then 4 walls of bubble wrap might reduce breakage by 50%.
of course the idea you could just put a double wrap around the whole thing and eliminate breakage is possible as well. but the larger box and added protection is costs that may not be needed.
Also, if you find out that your pick-up driver is causing 100% of your breakage and after it leaves that first terminal, there is zero breakage....
we can go on taking wild guesses.

Robin2:
Because we've been using it for many years with many couriers, including our last one that we had for several years. And the QA guy at our depot has personally visited us a number of times, checked it, watched us pack etc.

This suggests fairly clearly that the problem rests with the cheaper courier you are using.

So the question you have to face is whether the savings (compared to your previous courier) offset the cost and inconvenience of the breakages.

I know you said earlier "you get what you pay for but you also have to be able to pay for it" - but maybe you have simply got to the unacceptable bottom?

...R

kind of like :

you can use the older carrier
you can add more protective packaging.

pick one ?

jago2:
Because we've been using it for many years with many couriers, including our last one that we had for several years. And the QA guy at our depot has personally visited us a number of times, checked it, watched us pack etc.

Then the onus is on them to fix it.

Robin2:
So the question you have to face is whether the savings (compared to your previous courier) offset the cost and inconvenience of the breakages.

I know you said earlier "you get what you pay for but you also have to be able to pay for it" - but maybe you have simply got to the unacceptable bottom?

...R

I think you have it.

I mentioned earlier a 20% breakage rate ,That was for vacuum solar tubes.
At that point we gave up as costs were too high for us to be competitive.

They travel fine on pallets but when broken down into indvidual manufacturers packets breakage became unacceptable.

There were other reasons as well but that was the final decider.

aarg:
Then the onus is on them to fix it.

Don Quixote ?

Anecdotally when we looked at packing solutions i was told of a seller of stem glasses (champagne).

Too many breakages so they tried thicker bubble wrap or whatever and the problem got worse.
Turned out the problem was 'stiction' between the wrap and the glass.
Went back to the old packing and wrapped the glass in a layer of tissue paper first.
Solved the problem.

I doubt that changing courier behaviour is the answer.
Daveinnj is right i think it is about what works now with the delivery companies.
Unless you ha

I do notice an increase in problems with the glass I mail out around Christmas. The breakage goes up to maybe 0.5%, from 0.1% the rest of the year so really not much of a concern. The most difficult to ship product is the didgeridoos, which are a 5 ft long glass tube. I double box them and can ship them all the way across the country without problems but it's the only product I disable international shipping on because that seems like it would be asking for trouble. On all my other products I've actually been reducing my shipping box sizes and the amount of padding because the breakage rate is so low. I was much more paranoid about it when I first started doing online sales.

I haven't ever shipped palettes but I frequently receive them and that's actually where I see the worst breakage. I think the culprit is the forklifts.

The bigger problem for me is the packages that either get misdelivered or stolen. That goes way up around Christmas. It ends up being time consuming to deal with the customer and the postal service trying to figure out if it can be recovered before I have to resort to giving a refund. USPS refuses to take any responsibility even when their geotracking shows the package was delivered to the wrong address.

pert:
USPS refuses to take any responsibility even when their geotracking shows the package was delivered to the wrong address.

OH YES.

I had this with another international carrier, 3 weeks later had a demand from said carrier for customs duty and vat.

I did not receive it but had to pay tax despite not having it.

Got quite unpleasant.

With UK postie i have to pay first to collect and can refuse delivery.

Boardburner2:
Daveinnj is right i think it is about what works now with the delivery companies.
Unless you ha

New batteries again. >:(

Unless you have the skills to convert your accelerometer results to new packaging methods this could be an expensive proposition.
I do not know much about packaging but if you have an existing business that knows about this , possibly.

If for instance you are shipping wine bottles i doubt you are the only victim of deteriorating courrier methods.
I would expect packaging manufacturers to be aware of this and have a solution.
Albeit at a cost.

I re-read the first post.
we can help with Aruino stuff. selecting and setting up circuits, etc.
some factory floor testing to make sure the results are as expected.

in case you did not know, I am in NJ, in the USA.

if you need to test a shipment, I would be happy to photograph what is received and re-label the package for return shipment.

pert:
I haven't ever shipped palettes but I frequently receive them and that's actually where I see the worst breakage. I think the culprit is the forklifts.

Packing !

At 5 ft long excessive packing could cause this. I am assuming you are using euro 2 pallets for this.

With long glass tubes if there is too much cushioning the bending moment can cause breakage with a big drop off a forklift.
No definitive data though.

dave-in-nj:
if you need to test a shipment, I would be happy to photograph what is received and re-label the package for return shipment.

Ditto.

I am in the UK and would be happy to take a few photos of the delivered package before opening.

Give me a link to your site and i would be happy to order something.
So long as it is not a chateau latour 2009 or similar.

Not that i would not buy it but do not fancy paying for something that postie licks off the bottom of his truck. :slight_smile:

Robin2:
Because we've been using it for many years with many couriers, including our last one that we had for several years. And the QA guy at our depot has personally visited us a number of times, checked it, watched us pack etc.

This suggests fairly clearly that the problem rests with the cheaper courier you are using.

So the question you have to face is whether the savings (compared to your previous courier) offset the cost and inconvenience of the breakages.

I know you said earlier "you get what you pay for but you also have to be able to pay for it" - but maybe you have simply got to the unacceptable bottom?

...R

no, trust me, we are nowhere near the bottom. this is reputable courier (as much as any are) and not one of the cheapest or terrible ones like Yodel.

Hi,
Just reading through the thread, have your depot guys done a demographic of the damaged packages.

Do you get a % more damage from customers in one part of the country to another when you look at size of orders to those areas.

Being Sherlock here, your problem could be one of the handling depots in the delivery company or road route or airline or rail company.
Or even a Monday work blues.

Tom... :slight_smile:

jago2:
no, trust me, we are nowhere near the bottom. this is reputable courier

IMHO there lies the problem - failure to interpret the evidence!

If your breakage percentage is too high then you ARE at the bottom. Recognize it and move on.

...R

TomGeorge:
Hi,
Just reading through the thread, have your depot guys done a demographic of the damaged packages.

Do you get a % more damage from customers in one part of the country to another when you look at size of orders to those areas.

Being Sherlock here, your problem could be one of the handling depots in the delivery company or road route or airline or rail company.
Or even a Monday work blues.

Tom... :slight_smile:

all these would be answered by the idea the OP offered in his first post. create a data logger with sensors, even GPS, and send in the same box.
I had a thought that it could be lousy customers that claim damaged goods.
or this guy

you will never know until you datalog.

Hi,

all these would be answered by the idea the OP offered in his first post. create a data logger with sensors, even GPS, and send in the same box.

True, but the OP has all this information already with invoices and returned goods, and damaged goods claims.

Tom.... :slight_smile:

One place I worked we used to unload articulated lorries by hand and take the contents up two floors as there was no service lift. This was done by chain gang with anything of a suitable size and weight being thrown person to person, including cases containing glass and liquid.

Any breakages had normally already occurred when the goods were in pallets in the lorry, it was very rare for things (or people) to get damaged as packages were thrown along the line even if there was horseplay.

The idea of shipping some kind of tracking device to record what is done to a package seems like an attractive one. However it might be difficult to separate destructive handling from vigorous but actually quite safe handling. It also might be very difficult to get the courier to understand the information and to interpret it in the same way you do. If the courier stonewalls the sight of broken packages are they really going to pay attention to information on g forces?

TomGeorge:
Hi,True, but the OP has all this information already with invoices and returned goods, and damaged goods claims.

Tom.... :slight_smile:

this is not entirely correct.
with returned goods showing damage.
you do not know if it was damaged by :
the driver picking it up
the person unloading the truck
the handlers in the warehose
the handler loading the first transfer vehicle
the drive between depots
the unloading at the first depot
the handling in the warehouse
the loading onto the second transfer truck
the ride in the second transfer truck
the unloading at the final warehouse
moving in the warehouse
loading onto the delivery vehicle
inside of the delivery vehicle
by the driver at the customer destination.
Can you say, without any reservation that the unloading at the first terminal did either 100% or 0% of the breakage ?
if the results were that there was breakage at every point, then the problem is the packaging.
if the results show that 100% of the breakage was at the first transfer, then you go to the company for corrective measures.
I agree that if you find 90% of damage is to 3 people, you have to wonder if they are making false claims.

Now, I will ask the group a question.
pro-mini
vibration sensors
GPS
impact sensor
battery
enclosure
what do you think it would cost to put that together ?