How expensive could it be to rent your own truck and deliver it yourself to a fedex/ups sorting center? Seems weird that retailers are complaining over a $100 cost (very generous estimate) spread over 100+ packages.
Daily costs might look like this for the operation I was involved in (Cap. hill Seattle).
Rent a truck for a day (if available. every other business is trying to do the same thing): $20
Insurance for rented truck: $20
Parking for rented truck: $25
Loading, driving, and unloading truck 2x people for 1.5 hours at holiday rates $20/hr (if you can spare the labor, hiring someone you can trust to drive a truck/van is harder than it sounds): $60
Mileage charge for U-Haul ($1 per mile): $5
I would say that $130 is an absolute bare minimum to budget for. Keeping in mind that the shipper is still charging you the same amount as they were for pickup service. Logistics is hard.
I estimated $130 as an absolute bare minimum for the operation I was familiar with, it was based on the real world.
Feel free to take away the parking for a location that doesn't have paid parking. But make sure to factor in that the mileage and labor hours must also go up if the depot is farther away.
The larger point is that it is an additional expense and operation that small businesses need to deal with at the busiest time of year.
Some counterpoints:
- 100 as a cost for a truck run sounds like it could be a little low; you've got to load/unload them, and I'm not certain what the drop-off process looks like if you have more than a couple packages. I know from experience, loading up a van full of 50 PCs and monitors, driving to a location, and unloading, then driving back is a 1-2ish hour job for two people. (And in that case, the Van was already owned.) Yes that's a bit more of an 'extreme' example but since Newegg was one of the impacted retailers it felt like a relevant example.
- Online retail's 'Race to the bottom' has eliminated for many industries the ability to buffer for cost shifts like this. By that I mean, 100$ over 100 packages would still be an extra dollar per package. But if you're selling 5-10$ gloves, that 1$ may be cutting your profits in half.
Getting the slots at the UPS depot might be tricky, so. It shouldn't be such a huge cost driver, so.
Oh, and better check with your insurance and local laws. When you pay someone to drive for you all sorts of regulations come into play.
I work at UPS. We hand-load and unload everything. The loading equipment is a guy. If there is palletized volume then once it gets to the hub the pallet is broken down. When a trailer is being unloaded a worker is physically inside the trailer grabbing each and every individual package and placing them on a conveyor belt that takes the package to be sorted. Irregular packages (exceptional size, weight) are pushed out of the trailer and then loaded onto another, larger belt. This process may differ at other facilities, but that’s how it works in Raleigh, NC.
Well if you were making $1 profit on each package you've now got a serious problem haven't you?
You're also going to multiple employees per truck, with at least one being more senior since there could be tens of thousands of dollars in merchandise.
They'll need to get to the carrier facility and make sure the boxes are scanned, because they are now a variable in the transport, and it would look bad if a box went missing and supposedly never made it to the carrier. At the warehouse we have cameras that make it unnecessary to watch the boxes being scanned. Not to mention customers check tracking like hawks and would call and take up support resources wondering about their box that "shipped" but the tracking page says "Fedex is waiting on your box to arrive".
On top of this, carrier pickups are typically scheduled as late as possible. We lobbied heavily for our UPS / Fedex pickups to be 6pm (or later during peak). So you're going to need to send employees to the carrier at 6:30pm or later, dropping the truck off at the warehouse at 7:30 (at the earliest) after loading/unloading/scanning (It was a 15 min drive to the carrier center).
So they're getting home at 8pm, and need to be back at the warehouse at 7am to pick all the orders for the next day.
Isn't the car rental industry in shambles due to covid-19? There's probably plenty of trucks (or similar vehicles such as SUVs/minivans) available for rent for cheap.
>Can small shippers organize cooperatives to get access to them?
Small shippers likely won't face issues with volume, and even if they do they can use their own personal vehicles.
>Who's going to drive them?
All the people unemployed from covid?
I've been renting a full size pickup truck from my local enterprise RAC for less than the price of their cheapest sedan over the last month, but my friends renting uhauls have had a lot of trouble getting them.