What many may not realize is that there's a thriving industry in sending passengers on planes for the sole purpose of them taking things from A to B.
Years ago, you could get discounted flights to Europe where you couldn't check in any luggage. Why? That allowance was taken up by documents for various clients. This was usually quicker than any courier services at the time.
I've had friends who worked in the oil and gas industry. One story I was told was where parts were desperately needed to repair a drill bit on a gas platform. The best option? Someone would fly halfway around the world, drive to a particular factory, wait for the parts and then fly back. This was cheaper and faster than any courier service, even if you spent $10,000+ on the ticket.
This was exacerbated because a person with 200lb of machine parts could walk through customs where a shipment might get stuck in customs for weeks. And each day of non-operation cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Some years back, there was a "can't happen" problem with a telephone switch, such that the problem had "contaminated" the running databases on both processor cards, and the system was no longer capable of recovering itself. It needed a new card, and it needed it yesterday.
The manufacturer scrambled it down to the local airport, where they bought it a passenger ticket on the next plane out. While it was in the air, they arranged for an express courier in the destination city to pick it up from the airport and break the speed limit all the way to the phone office. Whereupon the driver asked the recipient which driveway to use because "the one that looks like the main entrance doesn't look like it's meant for truck traffic".
Truck? What?
Evidently the courier service heard the declared value of the shipment and just assumed it must be enormous, so they sent a semi. This enormous truck had picked it up and had been hurtling down the road, empty, with a pizza-box-sized parcel on the floor of the cab, where it would be safer.
One time someone in our family needed drugs delivered on a very time sensitive basis.
The specialty pharmacy fucked around and found out. I social engineered my way up the chain of command, interrupting the medical director’s dinner. They ended up hiring a courier to fly it halfway across the country. A dude showed up the doorstep at 4AM (four hours before it was needed) with a box packed with dry ice. The poor courier dude had a three hour cab ride, which probably cost more than the drug.
I made the courier and driver breakfast and coffee. The courier was fascinating, he had great stories and basically had a career mostly built on corporate screw-ups.
> I've had friends who worked in the oil and gas industry. One story I was told was where parts were desperately needed to repair a drill bit on a gas platform. The best option? Someone would fly halfway around the world, drive to a particular factory, wait for the parts and then fly back. This was cheaper and faster than any courier service, even if you spent $10,000+ on the ticket.
I was a summer student at a company that manufactured top drives for drill rigs. My days were mostly spent filing drawings and preparing documentation packages. One morning when I arrived at work, the head of the department asked me, "do you have a passport?"
He gave me a package of documents, an 18" machined steel rod and tickets for a flight that was roughly three hours from takeoff.
After driving home to pick up my passport and then across town to the airport, I didn't have enough time to check bags or even read the documentation I'd been given. I guessed the value of the part being 'under $1000' and US customs took me aside. While I was waiting, I read the documentation and discovered it was worth ~$50, though customs let me go before I could tell them.
Shockingly, I didn't have any trouble at security carrying the metal rod. I stepped onto the plane and they closed the doors behind me.
I was told that the downtime cost around $100,000 per hour, and that I was bringing the second replacement part. The first one sent was too small, which delayed repairs by a day.
In any case, that was my first (and thus far only) visit to Grand Junction, Colorado. I was kind of surprised that Canadian customs gave me way more hassle on my return the next day, despite that I had all my documents in order by then.
About 10 years ago I worked for a vendor of PCIe cards that were mainly sold to OEMs as a component of systems with 6- or 7-figure price tags. One of our customers discovered a critical bug that required reprogramming an FPGA on the card to fix. There were hundreds of cards in inventory at the customer's contract manufacturer's locations in Singapore, Scotland, and Texas. They stopped all three production lines and demanded we send someone to the locations to reprogram all of the cards.
So I was on a redeye that night from California to Texas with a Shuttle Cube w/PCIe slot and an ESD wrist strap under my arm. After reprogramming all of the cards in Texas it was back to the airport to catch another overnight flight to Scotland. Then after doing those cards it was on to Singapore, but I did get to stay one night in a hotel in Scotland since the soonest flight was the next morning. After doing the Singapore cards it was one night in Singapore and then back to California. Around the world in 5 days.
I'll throw in my "strange things flying on planes" story.
An ex-girlfriend worked for a large yogurt manufacturer. One of their manufacturing plants had an issue with "the culture" (the bacterial culture used for fermenting the yogurt, that is). She said product was exploding out of containers in the incubation rooms.
The operators decided to sterilize the plant and bring a sample of bacterial culture from another of the company's plants. An employee was paid to ride in a first class seat beside a temperature-controlled container of bacterial culture.
>> And each day of non-operation cost hundreds of thousands of dollars...
My close relative worked off shore for decades. Sometimes a down large production platform is a MILLION dollars an hour. Flying someone anywhere with a $250,000 part in their hands is nothing. There are entire industries built around "getting things to the rig/platform" faster.
This is more due to safety and security requirements of the package than the economics or shipping itself. FedEx and UPS will be very happy to ship you something for a steep discount without any assumed liability, but there would be no takers for it. Providing a trusted chain of custody for the package all the way from point A to B is the real value add.
Back in 2000, our SF based company had a server in a datacenter in the UK die. The quickest and cheapest way to fix it was to have our IT guy take a replacement server in a suitcase and fly to the UK to replace it.
Can verify, I've seen engineers flown out with parts to oversee repairs. Just looking at a flight tracker site and looking at how much checked baggage costs should show you it's an obvious choice.
Customs in most countries is hilariously broken, they can seize or sit on your stuff for months with no recourse and no due process.
> I've had friends who worked in the oil and gas industry. One story I was told was where parts were desperately needed to repair a drill bit on a gas platform. The best option? Someone would fly halfway around the world, drive to a particular factory, wait for the parts and then fly back.
This is normal in the IT industry. For high-value customers, vendors would be expected to fly in parts as needed. As just one example, I had a server flown in by a major reseller when the delivery service (UPS, IIRC) lost the original and the project was going to miss a critical deadline. HP's 6 hr CTR (call to repair) warranty guarantees your hardware will be restored within 6 hours of your call to support. It includes a local inventory of parts so that they can effectively replace the server if needed.
I once worked on a project with a steep late delivery penalty. We had already scheduled a "hit shot" truck, which is a dedicated semi, usually a team of 2 drivers, that drives directly, no stops, to the destination. We had scheduled it and it was 3 or 4 days to get from Denver to NYC. We were late, frantically building and assembling hardware and so just weren't ready when the truck came. We shipped the large pieces, large empty stainless steel shells in a mostly empty truck. We then took the extra 2 days to assemble the rest of the hardware and air freighted it at $50k extra cost and 1 day to get there. Basically we bought 2 days on the project for $50k and just barely made our delivery deadline.
Likewise some airlines don't even require someone to fly. I knew someone that would ship very expensive camera gear to film productions directly with an airline. They would check the cases and send it off. Someone would just go and pick it up. Obviously only really works if you're not dealing with customs.
A flight isn’t the only way either. Around here, a team of two brothers with a van will charge several thousand to transport parts at a moments notice to anywhere in the US, Canada or some of Mexico. They drive non-stop, one drives while the other sleeps.
Maybe not exactly a thriving industry, i.e. more like a niche.
Anecdotally I once had to fly to another EU city (some 1,200 km distance), get a rented car, drive to the house of the vendor at night (he took the pieces home after we phoned him at like 5 PM on a friday, a good reason to be friends with people) then drive to another city to be able to take an early flight back next morning.
The items were (at the x-ray machine in the airport) a bit suspect (they were drilling bits for a tunneling machine, in practice looking a lot like hand grenades) but I managed to convince the police they were spare parts/consumables.
But that was years before checks at boarding gates were tightened (yes, we could bring a water bottle) I wonder if they would pass today.
> What many may not realize is that there's a thriving industry in sending passengers on planes for the sole purpose of them taking things from A to B.
So someone out there must have made a courier-as-a-service website for this?
Sign up some people to be on standby, with a passport and a list of countries they have visa for, list them with their current location.
Person signs up to potentially make a few grand if they get the call.
Firms who are in need of a person throw in the money and the tickets.
Does that work? If I need something carried by a person from London to NYC today, what do I do?
Super secret things often go this way too, to avoid potential loss or theft.
I was working on the demo software for the on-stage reveal of a certain super secret cell phone from a certain manufacturer. Every time the phone had to have its firmware updated or the hardware switched out some guy had to come to my office and carry it back in-person to the HQ.
I remember one time I wrote the codename of the device on the outside of the anonymous box because I was worried the courier person might end up just leaving it at the reception at HQ and then the box would get opened by someone who shouldn't be seeing it. I thought having the codename on the outside would at least let it get routed internally to the team working on it.
I got a very, very angry phone call from someone at certain manufacturer swearing and cursing at me saying that someone could have seen the name and everything would have been exposed, blah blah. Total bullshit.
In the end the demo went ahead successfully in front of a world-wide audience. The live demo was supposed to be loaded onto some certain servers, but time ran out and it ended up running off a PC in my business partner's closet over his home DSL. A certain CEO was not aware of this as he held the device on stage. Watching the event on a stream from the BBC was a pants soiling moment.
> That allowance was taken up by documents for various clients. This was usually quicker than any courier services at the time.
They were still a courier service. I once sat next to a guy (in first class!) who was accompanying checks to Hawaii. Yes, not so long ago they had to physically travel to the issuing bank. He was basically retired so he did this to travel, around and earn some money.
At the end of the flight they let him leave first. He told me they would let him off and he would go down to the tarmac to watch the cargo hold be unlocked and make sure the cargo wasn’t tampered with.
I’ve also had someone hand carry electronics to / from a customer. Sometimes it’s just easier.
In the Amiga community we have the legend of "Joe Pillow". That was the name under which the airline seat was booked, that would hold the precious Amiga prototype that was used to demo the machine at CES '84.
Surprisingly - clearing customs in many countries can be done by a random person who is willing to take a trip out to the airport and just pay brokerage and customs fees directly. I was in Jamaica and had some telecom gear fedexed to me - I went to pick it up but didn’t have the appropriate tax ID number to do so - I was able to head to downtown Kingston, provide my passport, they gave me a TRN (kind of like a SSN) and I went back to customs, paid the $20 or so and voila - I had the device clearing customs in the same day. I often wonder if it’s that straightforward in other countries. I do know if you hire a customs broker, in say Mexico (which fedex can’t clear customs for you - unlike say Germany) - the customs broker will end up charging you $1500 in fees to clear a $1300 NUC.
Somewhat related to the original topic and this flight tangent, apparently fresh flowers are delivered by plane due to the combination of lightness and requirements for fast delivery. They almost act like an anti-ballast, filling up space that is otherwise unused but without adding much weight.
I worked for an oil and gas company for a very long time, and frequently saw something similar, but not quite the same.
I didn't see anyone specifically put on a plane to collect a part - but there was no need, as the field team were flying around all over the place anyway. So, a manager would accost someone going from Aberdeen to Houston, for example, and ask them to put a 10kg part in their luggage on the return journey. Then the part would get dropped off at the Aberdeen facility, and put on the next chopper to the offshore platform that needed it.
Sending human remains! I recently discovered it's cheaper to go in person with someone's ashes in your hand luggage on an international flight than to have them sent by air (actually, you can't send human remains by postal service or courier), and much easier too. I wonder whether anyone offers it as a commercial service (maybe as a side income?). It's too bad you can't take cadavers with you on flights, the cost of that is murderous.
Happens (although less often now) in Formula 1 as well - brand new parts being sent over in a private jet, or commercial, to test and race that weekend.
While the tweet is correct ("It is physically impossible to exceed the 70-pound domestic weight limit for a small flat rate box") the shortened title here which omits the word "small" is very misleading. The USPS offers a variety of sizes of flat rate boxes (https://www.usps.com/ship/priority-mail.htm#flatrate), all of which have the same 70 lb weight limit. It's only the "small" that cannot be overweight. The two mediums and the large can exceed the limit with dense contents. Perhaps the title could be changed to omit "physical" and add back "small"?
I have a 115lb shipment of small metal parts that needs to be across the country before Wed. Both FedEx and UPS quoted me ~$750 to ship it in a 12"x8"x8" OSB box via 2-day shipping. Fedex one rate boxes have a weight limit of 50lbs. The small boxes are $31/ea to ship. I just finished breaking the shipment up into 3 parts. Heck, next day would be ~$300.
There's a reason for it. Package sizes and weight limits are optimized for workers who are going to carry them. So yes in your case the total weight loaded on to the truck or plane may be the same, but loading/unloading 3x40 lb boxes and carrying them to your front porch is very different from doing the same with a single 115 lb box.
Airlines work the same way. 2x50 lb bags cost $30 each. One single 100lb bag has a $200 surcharge.
Let me recommend pirateship.com for discounted USPS/UPS rates. Not affiliated, just a happy customer.
It gives me a UPS 2nd day air quote of $338.90 from 27518 to 95050 for a 12" x 8" x 8" box weighing 115 lbs. That's supposedly 66% off retail ($1000.12).
But as sibling comment mentions, think of the person delivering a 115 lb package. I semi-recently shipped some treadmill parts to a recycler and they went via three boxes (the recycler paid for them).
Negotiated FedEx and UPS rates are often 90% off the retail price or better. If you can get the box sent from a shipper that has a daily pickup from UPS and reimburse them, you may save a great deal of money.
Semi related - a few months ago, while not fully sober, I was aimlessly browsing through Amazon and ended up owning a set of two 1.5inch cubes - one aluminium, one tungsten.
It’s kind of a silly purchase considering it’s a lot of money for 2 metal cubes, but it’s honestly very impressive just how heavy that small cube is - both objectively, and when compared to the aluminium cube.
Also makes for a great talking point when having guests over.
When I heard that the crypto millionaires were buying Tungsten cubes for fun, I checked into the prices. Amazon lists a 1.5" cube (weighs 1 kg) at $199 and a 4" cube (that weighs 18.9 kg [0]) at $3499. There's no way I'm spending that, but I will admit to wanting to experience their density for myself.
Since I discovered the availability of anvils on Amazon, I have always wondered about the economics of shipping them.
Right now, I can order a 66lb "Happybuy" anvil for $153 with free prime shipping. One assumes that the $153 includes the cost of shipping it all the way from China in the first place.
For comparison, a similarly sized anvil from a reputable local dealer costs $949 plus tax and shipping at the lowest rate (UPS standard) is $93.
Two things: 1) that "anvil" is cast iron or potentially at that size, semi hollow steel. It's not great for doing anvil things and will likely break, whereas the "reputable" one is cast steel or wrought iron, both of which are much much much tougher for beating on. 2) The more interesting thing here is the market for kettlebells and other heavy weights -- they can go up to hundreds of pounds, though typically top out around 100 lbs. Kettlebells that prime ship are all cheaper than any reputable manufacturer since they use their own logistics. I've unfortunately graduated to sizes that the main suppliers don't list on Amazon (40kg+) which have to be paid for UPS shipping and a non-trivial portion of the cost is the packaging to prevent damage to something that heavy. At this point, when I need to buy a new round of them, I'll be driving to the manufacturer in Ontario (including expensive Canadian gas and bridge fees) because that's cheaper than shipping more than one...
The transportation from China probably isn't the issue. Google suggests that moving a 40-foot shipping container across the Pacific Ocean costs several thousand dollars. You can fit a whole bunch of anvils inside a shipping container [citation needed], so the cost for this part of the journey may be pretty low.
On the order of $10k to ship a 40,000lb, 40ft shipping container from China to LA without insurance now, prices have increased a lot recently. So the per item cost into the US is around $16 on the low end for this anvil. But then there are other costs associated with shipping something to the amazon warehouse once the container gets to the US, and amazon will either charge a fee or require the seller to split the shipment to different states. It costs about $2-$3 a mile to ship a container across the US by truck or train, and less than truckload shipments are generally more expensive per item. And they need to pay someone, or pay amazon to put labels on everything, handle/repackage damaged items. Or another $5-$10 to ship it to the warehouse.
Amazon negotiates with UPS and other couriers, and they have their own shipping service, so their merchants pay a lot less than the "retail" cost for shipping to amazon customers. For that 66lb anvil, amazon charges ~$35 for fulfillment including picking, packaging and shipping. About 50 cents a pound. Amazon also charges other fees including the commission/referral on the sale, storage, etc that are mostly not based on item weight, this is about $20 more for a $150 sale.
Retail cost to ship a 66lb anvil UPS from LA to SF would be about $90. With a regular commercial discount about $65, more for longer distances and less for shorter. If you are in the business of shipping a lot you can negotiate a slightly better rate than $1 a pound.
My in-laws bought us a cast iron outdoor pizza oven one year from Amazon. It probably weighed close to 200 lbs and they had to ship it twice because the first guy dropped it off the back of the lift on the truck while unloading it at our house. I don't know how much Amazon actually spent on our free shipping but they certainly lost money on the deal.
This reminds me of a guy in 2007 whose curiosity got him to cram around 34kg (75lbs) worth of lead bricks into the Japanese postal service's ExPack 500 flat-rate envelope, which had a supposedly 'impossible' limit of 30kg (66lbs) and were usually not checked for weight when sending. The post office clerk wrestled with it and eventually agreed to ship the thing. He didn't actually send it though.
On the other end of the spectrum is lightweight, but bulky stuff. I sold things like this for a time, some time ago. Would get a fair amount of grief from customers who would use the simpler UPS/Fedex calculators on the weight only and complain that I padding shipping prices. But UPS and Fedex charge "dimensional weight" for these types of shipments, and you have to use a more complicated formula.
Out of curiosity, what kind of weights were they? I was under the impression that it has been phased out of many uses because of high toxicity (including via skin absorption when handling it)
Not part of the USPS small box story, but I ordered a bundle of steel plates that unfortunately fit through our mail slot on our front door, and absolutely destroyed the ceramic tile floor when the delivery person dropped them through that slot.
I ordered a couple 70 pound blocks of tungsten. They were each double boxed and still somehow managed to slip through the first box. Might have been both amusing and annoying to handle those boxes.
My friend worked at UPS. He said you could always tell when someone had bullets shipped because of the rattle and heavy weight. He said those were probably the most common heavy shipment they saw.
Couldn't read the Twitter post with NoScript, and didn't want to turn it off, but I verified the claim. Forgive me for working in cubic inches, but those are the unit measures specified on the USPS web page: https://store.usps.com/store/product/shipping-supplies/prior...
So the volume of the box is 82.6669921875 cubic inches. Assuming we're shipping a block of Tungsten at 0.7 lb/in^3, then our shipment would weigh 57.86689453125 lbs, which is less than 83% of the maximum allowed weight of 70lbs.
I wonder how closely my results agree with the Twitter post...
It’s always been strange to me that people ship bullets Willy nilly, my dad buys his yearly supply at once and this last year they delivered them to the wrong address. The people brought them to him but it just seems weird to allow shipping weaponry and not even verifying that it’s delivered to the correct person.
Did in person deliveries via plane quite a bit in the 90s. Was working for the worlds largest semiconductor company.
Most staggering example was trying to get a very very small box of engine controller CPUs from Penang Malaysia to an auto plant outside of Philadelphia to get there before 8am shift start. Only way to make it work was hand carry from Penang through Singapore to Anchorage, clear customs and then rented Learjet to Philly.
Penalties for late delivery were massive. In this case had we been a couple hours later would have resulted in cascading loss of production resulting in auto union people needing to work during their summer shutdown and quite large cost.
Semiconductors are different from other parts. They take a long time to manufacture. And, sometimes you think you've made them but they just die for whatever reason. If you want to make a new factory it takes years too. I wonder if the auto companies have learned to keep some semiconductors around just in case. Oh wait. No.
Ah ah. But 745 hours of free internet is a bit less impressive and catchy.
(edit: changed from 744 to 745 to take long October months with winter hour changes in account, add a second to that if you want to be sure about leap seconds)
The only way to produce a higher density metal at standard pressures and temperatures would be to get it to go through some sort of allotropic transformation to a crystal structure that is more tightly packed, but the ordinary solid phase of most metals is usually (relatively) close to its limits due to atomic structure already. Most of these alternatives are only stable at high pressures or unusual temperatures or both, and they may very well be less dense than the common form.
Depends how you measure it. Any X kg/lbs of matter here on earth is still that same X kg/lbs everywhere in the universe. Assuming the scale being used to weight is correctly calibrated to whatever planet it's in, it would still show up as the same amount of kg/lbs.
jmyeet|3 years ago
Years ago, you could get discounted flights to Europe where you couldn't check in any luggage. Why? That allowance was taken up by documents for various clients. This was usually quicker than any courier services at the time.
I've had friends who worked in the oil and gas industry. One story I was told was where parts were desperately needed to repair a drill bit on a gas platform. The best option? Someone would fly halfway around the world, drive to a particular factory, wait for the parts and then fly back. This was cheaper and faster than any courier service, even if you spent $10,000+ on the ticket.
This was exacerbated because a person with 200lb of machine parts could walk through customs where a shipment might get stuck in customs for weeks. And each day of non-operation cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
myself248|3 years ago
The manufacturer scrambled it down to the local airport, where they bought it a passenger ticket on the next plane out. While it was in the air, they arranged for an express courier in the destination city to pick it up from the airport and break the speed limit all the way to the phone office. Whereupon the driver asked the recipient which driveway to use because "the one that looks like the main entrance doesn't look like it's meant for truck traffic".
Truck? What?
Evidently the courier service heard the declared value of the shipment and just assumed it must be enormous, so they sent a semi. This enormous truck had picked it up and had been hurtling down the road, empty, with a pizza-box-sized parcel on the floor of the cab, where it would be safer.
Spooky23|3 years ago
The specialty pharmacy fucked around and found out. I social engineered my way up the chain of command, interrupting the medical director’s dinner. They ended up hiring a courier to fly it halfway across the country. A dude showed up the doorstep at 4AM (four hours before it was needed) with a box packed with dry ice. The poor courier dude had a three hour cab ride, which probably cost more than the drug.
I made the courier and driver breakfast and coffee. The courier was fascinating, he had great stories and basically had a career mostly built on corporate screw-ups.
slavik81|3 years ago
I was a summer student at a company that manufactured top drives for drill rigs. My days were mostly spent filing drawings and preparing documentation packages. One morning when I arrived at work, the head of the department asked me, "do you have a passport?"
He gave me a package of documents, an 18" machined steel rod and tickets for a flight that was roughly three hours from takeoff.
After driving home to pick up my passport and then across town to the airport, I didn't have enough time to check bags or even read the documentation I'd been given. I guessed the value of the part being 'under $1000' and US customs took me aside. While I was waiting, I read the documentation and discovered it was worth ~$50, though customs let me go before I could tell them.
Shockingly, I didn't have any trouble at security carrying the metal rod. I stepped onto the plane and they closed the doors behind me.
I was told that the downtime cost around $100,000 per hour, and that I was bringing the second replacement part. The first one sent was too small, which delayed repairs by a day.
In any case, that was my first (and thus far only) visit to Grand Junction, Colorado. I was kind of surprised that Canadian customs gave me way more hassle on my return the next day, despite that I had all my documents in order by then.
ralph84|3 years ago
So I was on a redeye that night from California to Texas with a Shuttle Cube w/PCIe slot and an ESD wrist strap under my arm. After reprogramming all of the cards in Texas it was back to the airport to catch another overnight flight to Scotland. Then after doing those cards it was on to Singapore, but I did get to stay one night in a hotel in Scotland since the soonest flight was the next morning. After doing the Singapore cards it was one night in Singapore and then back to California. Around the world in 5 days.
EvanAnderson|3 years ago
An ex-girlfriend worked for a large yogurt manufacturer. One of their manufacturing plants had an issue with "the culture" (the bacterial culture used for fermenting the yogurt, that is). She said product was exploding out of containers in the incubation rooms.
The operators decided to sterilize the plant and bring a sample of bacterial culture from another of the company's plants. An employee was paid to ride in a first class seat beside a temperature-controlled container of bacterial culture.
readingnews|3 years ago
My close relative worked off shore for decades. Sometimes a down large production platform is a MILLION dollars an hour. Flying someone anywhere with a $250,000 part in their hands is nothing. There are entire industries built around "getting things to the rig/platform" faster.
paxys|3 years ago
jedberg|3 years ago
R0b0t1|3 years ago
Customs in most countries is hilariously broken, they can seize or sit on your stuff for months with no recourse and no due process.
wolverine876|3 years ago
This is normal in the IT industry. For high-value customers, vendors would be expected to fly in parts as needed. As just one example, I had a server flown in by a major reseller when the delivery service (UPS, IIRC) lost the original and the project was going to miss a critical deadline. HP's 6 hr CTR (call to repair) warranty guarantees your hardware will be restored within 6 hours of your call to support. It includes a local inventory of parts so that they can effectively replace the server if needed.
iancmceachern|3 years ago
dawnerd|3 years ago
https://www.deltacargo.com/Cargo/
xwdv|3 years ago
jaclaz|3 years ago
Anecdotally I once had to fly to another EU city (some 1,200 km distance), get a rented car, drive to the house of the vendor at night (he took the pieces home after we phoned him at like 5 PM on a friday, a good reason to be friends with people) then drive to another city to be able to take an early flight back next morning.
The items were (at the x-ray machine in the airport) a bit suspect (they were drilling bits for a tunneling machine, in practice looking a lot like hand grenades) but I managed to convince the police they were spare parts/consumables.
But that was years before checks at boarding gates were tightened (yes, we could bring a water bottle) I wonder if they would pass today.
hsnewman|3 years ago
lordnacho|3 years ago
So someone out there must have made a courier-as-a-service website for this?
Sign up some people to be on standby, with a passport and a list of countries they have visa for, list them with their current location.
Person signs up to potentially make a few grand if they get the call.
Firms who are in need of a person throw in the money and the tickets.
Does that work? If I need something carried by a person from London to NYC today, what do I do?
kingcharles|3 years ago
I was working on the demo software for the on-stage reveal of a certain super secret cell phone from a certain manufacturer. Every time the phone had to have its firmware updated or the hardware switched out some guy had to come to my office and carry it back in-person to the HQ.
I remember one time I wrote the codename of the device on the outside of the anonymous box because I was worried the courier person might end up just leaving it at the reception at HQ and then the box would get opened by someone who shouldn't be seeing it. I thought having the codename on the outside would at least let it get routed internally to the team working on it.
I got a very, very angry phone call from someone at certain manufacturer swearing and cursing at me saying that someone could have seen the name and everything would have been exposed, blah blah. Total bullshit.
In the end the demo went ahead successfully in front of a world-wide audience. The live demo was supposed to be loaded onto some certain servers, but time ran out and it ended up running off a PC in my business partner's closet over his home DSL. A certain CEO was not aware of this as he held the device on stage. Watching the event on a stream from the BBC was a pants soiling moment.
gumby|3 years ago
They were still a courier service. I once sat next to a guy (in first class!) who was accompanying checks to Hawaii. Yes, not so long ago they had to physically travel to the issuing bank. He was basically retired so he did this to travel, around and earn some money.
At the end of the flight they let him leave first. He told me they would let him off and he would go down to the tarmac to watch the cargo hold be unlocked and make sure the cargo wasn’t tampered with.
I’ve also had someone hand carry electronics to / from a customer. Sometimes it’s just easier.
bitwize|3 years ago
Nicholas_C|3 years ago
ghshephard|3 years ago
ZeroGravitas|3 years ago
GordonS|3 years ago
I didn't see anyone specifically put on a plane to collect a part - but there was no need, as the field team were flying around all over the place anyway. So, a manager would accost someone going from Aberdeen to Houston, for example, and ask them to put a 10kg part in their luggage on the return journey. Then the part would get dropped off at the Aberdeen facility, and put on the next chopper to the offshore platform that needed it.
versteegen|3 years ago
philjohn|3 years ago
jcims|3 years ago
baq|3 years ago
nkurz|3 years ago
dang|3 years ago
PainfullyNormal|3 years ago
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perihelions|3 years ago
This isn't useful for USPS box packaging; I just think it's neat.
edit: Also, inertial confinement fusion plasmas go up to about 1,000 g/cm³,
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0008231 ("Unified first-principles equations of state of deuterium-tritium mixtures in the global inertial confinement fusion region")
andersco|3 years ago
ilyagr|3 years ago
It would be remarkable, but I guess it's hard to imagine how that could work.
s1artibartfast|3 years ago
ortusdux|3 years ago
paxys|3 years ago
Airlines work the same way. 2x50 lb bags cost $30 each. One single 100lb bag has a $200 surcharge.
treeman79|3 years ago
One guy mailed a bank. One brick at a time.
js2|3 years ago
It gives me a UPS 2nd day air quote of $338.90 from 27518 to 95050 for a 12" x 8" x 8" box weighing 115 lbs. That's supposedly 66% off retail ($1000.12).
But as sibling comment mentions, think of the person delivering a 115 lb package. I semi-recently shipped some treadmill parts to a recycler and they went via three boxes (the recycler paid for them).
BenjiWiebe|3 years ago
jeffbee|3 years ago
radicality|3 years ago
It’s kind of a silly purchase considering it’s a lot of money for 2 metal cubes, but it’s honestly very impressive just how heavy that small cube is - both objectively, and when compared to the aluminium cube. Also makes for a great talking point when having guests over.
chiph|3 years ago
[0] free Prime shipping for the win
perihelions|3 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28318754 ("My Tungsten Cube", 330 comments)
ComradePhil|3 years ago
deepspace|3 years ago
Right now, I can order a 66lb "Happybuy" anvil for $153 with free prime shipping. One assumes that the $153 includes the cost of shipping it all the way from China in the first place.
For comparison, a similarly sized anvil from a reputable local dealer costs $949 plus tax and shipping at the lowest rate (UPS standard) is $93.
wcunning|3 years ago
seoaeu|3 years ago
gnopgnip|3 years ago
Amazon negotiates with UPS and other couriers, and they have their own shipping service, so their merchants pay a lot less than the "retail" cost for shipping to amazon customers. For that 66lb anvil, amazon charges ~$35 for fulfillment including picking, packaging and shipping. About 50 cents a pound. Amazon also charges other fees including the commission/referral on the sale, storage, etc that are mostly not based on item weight, this is about $20 more for a $150 sale.
Retail cost to ship a 66lb anvil UPS from LA to SF would be about $90. With a regular commercial discount about $65, more for longer distances and less for shorter. If you are in the business of shipping a lot you can negotiate a slightly better rate than $1 a pound.
linksnapzz|3 years ago
peterlk|3 years ago
apricot|3 years ago
brewdad|3 years ago
scarface74|3 years ago
wolverine876|3 years ago
needle0|3 years ago
https://sites.google.com/site/fluordoublet/%E3%83%98%E3%83%B...
A few years later, the ExPack was deprecated and replaced with the LetterPack envelope, which now has a limit of...only 4kg (8.8lbs). Hah!
webmaven|3 years ago
tyingq|3 years ago
spindle|3 years ago
Pun of the day.
TheJoeMan|3 years ago
radicality|3 years ago
bombcar|3 years ago
TMWNN|3 years ago
Blackthorn|3 years ago
leviathant|3 years ago
jotm|3 years ago
postalrat|3 years ago
giantg2|3 years ago
anonymousiam|3 years ago
So the volume of the box is 82.6669921875 cubic inches. Assuming we're shipping a block of Tungsten at 0.7 lb/in^3, then our shipment would weigh 57.86689453125 lbs, which is less than 83% of the maximum allowed weight of 70lbs.
I wonder how closely my results agree with the Twitter post...
gruez|3 years ago
FYI next time you can use something like nitter (eg. https://nitter.net/PaulMSherman/status/1516936733769801734) which works with scripts disabled.
krallja|3 years ago
The interior dimensions (8 5/8" x 5 3/8" x 1 5/8") are ~75.333 in^3.
If you filled the box with pure osmium, the densest substance known to man, it would weigh ~61.48 lbs.»
unknown|3 years ago
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post_break|3 years ago
edgyquant|3 years ago
mc4ndr3|3 years ago
rondrabkin|3 years ago
Most staggering example was trying to get a very very small box of engine controller CPUs from Penang Malaysia to an auto plant outside of Philadelphia to get there before 8am shift start. Only way to make it work was hand carry from Penang through Singapore to Anchorage, clear customs and then rented Learjet to Philly.
Penalties for late delivery were massive. In this case had we been a couple hours later would have resulted in cascading loss of production resulting in auto union people needing to work during their summer shutdown and quite large cost.
Semiconductors are different from other parts. They take a long time to manufacture. And, sometimes you think you've made them but they just die for whatever reason. If you want to make a new factory it takes years too. I wonder if the auto companies have learned to keep some semiconductors around just in case. Oh wait. No.
AdamJacobMuller|3 years ago
I feel old.
unknown|3 years ago
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jl6|3 years ago
jraph|3 years ago
(edit: changed from 744 to 745 to take long October months with winter hour changes in account, add a second to that if you want to be sure about leap seconds)
PaulHoule|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
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lsh123|3 years ago
SergeAx|3 years ago
butlerm|3 years ago
yeetsfromhellL2|3 years ago
planetsprite|3 years ago
a9h74j|3 years ago
Hamcha|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
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Taniwha|3 years ago
Knight69|3 years ago
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xg15|3 years ago
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