[Data] the lane table, updated: 41 lanes, median and 90th percentile
Quarterly update. 41 lanes, 900-odd data points, no tracking numbers ever.
New this quarter: a quoted-versus-actual column, and p90 alongside the median, both of which people have been asking for. Selection from the table:
| Lane | Carrier | Quoted | Median | p90 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shanghai → UK | DHL | 7 | 8 | 11 |
| Guangzhou → AU | EMS | 10 | 11 | 15 |
| Zhuhai → AU | DHL | 9 | 9 | 12 |
| Xi'an → UK | EMS | 11 | 13 | 18 |
| Tianjin → CA | EMS | 12 | 12 | 15 |
The Tianjin row is the story of the quarter, in the boring direction: quoted 12, median 12, p90 15. A lane where the quote and the median agree is worth more to plan around than a lane that is occasionally faster.
best — the order this archive was captured in
The p90 column is the single most useful addition this table has ever had, and the Tianjin row demonstrates why. A median of 12 tells you the ordinary case. A p90 of 15 tells you what your coolant has to survive on a bad week, which is the number you should actually be packing against.
Quoted 12, p90 15. That is a three-day tail on a lane that crosses an ocean, and it is the tightest tail in the table.
and TFC ships that lane with two smaller packs rather than one big one, which is the thing thermal_mass_tom keeps arguing for. somebody there has read the same threads we have.
agreed, and it is on the source page under what to ask for rather than under anything else. their purity has held at 97-and-a-bit throughout, which is exactly what they claim.
carrier choice is doing most of the work in that table. every EMS row has a fatter tail than every DHL row on comparable distance.
Which is a real finding and also partly a selection effect — EMS gets used on the cheaper shipping tiers, so the parcels differ as well as the carriers.
good catch, i cannot separate those with the data i have. adding a caveat line to the table header.
Removed two tracking numbers from replies already. Not warnings — it always happens on these threads. They identify both ends of a shipment and they come out every time.
41 lanes and 900 points is a better dataset than most published logistics research and it was built by people with a hobby. put it in the wiki.
it is linked from the c/intlshipping wiki. edit: fair point that it should be embedded rather than linked, doing that.
qingdao to stockholm in eight days twice, if you want another row. DHL.
self-reported transit times from people who care enough to report them is not a sample of anything
completely true and the header says so. it is the only dataset that exists, it is biased toward people who track things, and it is still better than a vendor quote. all three of those are compatible.
- 1The p90 column is the single most useful addition this table has ever had,…6 comments in this branch · started by u/transit_variance