[Question] Canada — has anyone got a straight answer on DHL
Trying to get a straight answer on this: Canada — has anyone got a straight answer on DHL.
A quoted lead time is a commitment you can evaluate. Measuring quoted against actual across several orders tells you more about an operation than the raw speed does.
Median transit is the useful statistic. The minimum is a story about one shipment and the mean is dragged around by a single hold.
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.
If somebody has the same thing measured a different way, post it next to mine and we will see whether they agree.
best — the order this archive was captured in
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.
a quoted lead time you can hold them to is worth more than a fast one you cannot
Four observations is not a distribution. The lane tables here only became predictive once individual routes had a dozen or more reports behind them.
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.
Merged into the standing thread for that lane so the reports accumulate in one place.
Where did the time actually go — international leg, clearance, or last mile?
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.
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
Ordered from the warehouse in Ireland instead of origin and the whole customs question disappeared. 14 days, door to door.
a lane with four reports is not yet a lane
a lane with four reports is not yet a lane
valeria_karlsen is right about regional stock. It changes the shape of the distribution, not just the mean.
valeria_karlsen is right about regional stock.
This is why the lane table is organised the way it is. The supplier is not the unit.