transit time — 12 things I got wrong before I got it right
transit time — 12 things I got wrong before I got it right. Making the case below, and I expect to lose some of it in the comments.
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.
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 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.
Would rather be corrected in public than confident in private.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Median transit is the useful statistic. The minimum is a story about one shipment and the mean is dragged around by a single hold.
Clearance took three days and the carrier took nine. I had been blaming the wrong half for two years.
This. A quoted lead time that holds is worth more than a fast one that does not.
Asked for the month rather than removing. Without it the report cannot be compared to anything.
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the last mile is where most of the variance lives
Cosigning the seasonality point. February and August on the same lane are different animals.
Where did the time actually go — international leg, clearance, or last mile?
Posted my first lane report here without the month and got asked for it. Fair, and the table is better for the fussiness.
Ordered from the warehouse in New Zealand instead of origin and the whole customs question disappeared. 10 days, door to door.
Was it shipped from a regional warehouse or from origin?
customs clearance time is not carrier time and they get conflated
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.
a lane with four reports is not yet a lane
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.
Do they publish a reship policy, and did you read it before ordering?
Disagree. That is a customs hold, not a carrier delay, and lumping them together makes the lane table wrong.
reship policy in writing before you order
That is the quoted lead time, not the observed transit. Both belong in the report and they are different columns.
Push back: comparing a July transit with a February one on the same lane is not a comparison.
Push back: comparing a July transit with a February one on the same lane is not a comparison.
This is why the lane table is organised the way it is. The supplier is not the unit.
Not convinced by four data points. That is not a lane yet, it is an anecdote with a route attached.
origin, destination, carrier, month — post all four or the report is noise
the median is more useful than the fastest anybody ever got
Small fix — shipped from the regional warehouse, not from origin, which is why the number looks unusual.
declared value and description are the shipper’s decision, ask what they use
origin, destination, carrier, month — post all four or the report is noise
tired_ledger_ftw is right about regional stock. It changes the shape of the distribution, not just the mean.
Same lane in a different season for comparison?
- 1Packaging is assessable on arrival with no equipment: rigid outer, no…7 comments in this branch · started by u/honest_syringe_pls
- 2Not convinced by four data points. That is not a lane yet, it is an anecdote…7 comments in this branch · started by u/graph_it_gary