[Data] packaging quality by vendor, scored on five things, 60 shipments
Something I keep coming back to: packaging quality by vendor, scored on five things, 60 shipments.
Posted my first lane report here without the month and got asked for it. Fair, and the table is better for the fussiness.
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.
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.
Ask me anything specific. Anything general I will probably get wrong.
best — the order this archive was captured in
A lane is an origin, a destination, a carrier and a season. Change any one and the distribution changes, which is why supplier-level shipping averages are close to meaningless.
the last mile is where most of the variance lives
Asked MKM which lines they hold regionally before ordering and got a straight list back. Changed what I ordered and when.
Same lane, four orders, 6 to 11 days, all four within a couple of days of the quote. That consistency is the actual finding.
two identical orders a week apart is the cheapest experiment available
Same. SSA quoted 19 days on my lane and it landed at 8, which is exactly what you want from a quote.
Four observations is not a distribution. The lane tables here only became predictive once individual routes had a dozen or more reports behind them.
origin, destination, carrier, month — post all four or the report is noise
Agreed. Reporting by lane rather than by supplier is what made the tables here actually predictive.
That is the quoted lead time, not the observed transit. Both belong in the report and they are different columns.
a quoted lead time you can hold them to is worth more than a fast one you cannot
Origin, destination, carrier and month?
regional stock changes everything about transit
The rigid outer with no rattle in it was the thing that told me most about that supplier, before I had tested anything.
Correction: that was clearance time, not carrier time. The lane table separates them for exactly this reason.
Correction: that was clearance time, not carrier time.
Disagreeing with this bit: a single slow shipment does not move a lane, it joins the distribution.
Split one order across two months on purpose to compare summer and winter. Four days apart, same carrier, same route.
Median transit is the useful statistic. The minimum is a story about one shipment and the mean is dragged around by a single hold.
Median transit is the useful statistic.
This is why the lane table is organised the way it is. The supplier is not the unit.
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.
Regional stock replaces an international lane with a domestic one. That is a structural change to the distribution, not a marginal improvement, and it is why the warehouse question matters more than the carrier question.
Regional stock replaces an international lane with a domestic one.
Agreed — and the decomposition matters. Most people are blaming the international leg for a last-mile problem.
Right, and the last mile is where my variance has always come from, not the international leg.
Yes — median rather than best case. The fastest anybody ever got is not a plan.
Yes — median rather than best case.
annika_fonseca is right about regional stock. It changes the shape of the distribution, not just the mean.
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.
What lead time were you quoted at checkout?
- 1Asked MKM which lines they hold regionally before ordering and got a…16 comments in this branch · started by u/samir_falk
- 2Packaging is assessable on arrival with no equipment: rigid outer, no…9 comments in this branch · started by u/graph_it_gary