Shipping Beer

Huh? Why are they throwing boxes? Will they still throw if it has a fragile label or writing on it? This blew me away.

 

Are you serious?

 

Alcoholic beverages are prohibited by law for USPS. Scroll down and expand.
https://www.usps.com/ship/shipping-restrictions.htm

 

Well, on an average night, more than two million packages move through my company's main hub. That's approximately a half million packages per hour during the average 4 hour sort. I would love to say every package gets a gentle handling, but the truth is, as the deadline to make the flights approaches, the rules sort of go out the window. As to the "Fragile" labels, at half a million an hour, no one stops to read the details. Most of the time, we do it right. Sometimes, we miss the mark. Stop and think about all those videos that show up at Christmas showing UPS, Fedex, and USPS tossing computers, tv's and who knows what else. Makes for great news stories and Youtube entertainment...when it isn't your box of beer.

 

I had a chance to observe packages from one of these carriers being offloaded at their station at the airport. These packages were flung off the truck, regardless of whether a package/box had the words "fragile" on it or not. Makes no difference. They do not pay attention to that

 

Fed Ex, never the Postal service.

 

Yes.

UPS: "Note: UPS does not provide special handling for packages with "Fragile", package orientation (e.g., "UP" arrows or "This End Up" markings), or any other similar such markings."

Ref: https://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/ship/packaging/guidelines/how_to4.html

So pack like it's gonna get dropped from 5 ft.

 

PRO TIP: Double garbage bag the bottles. Any leaks will go undetected and at least you have your bottles, even if they are damaged.

 

Awful story. My condolences.

Living in Alaska, the USPS flatrate box is the only way to go (a medium box holds three 22oz bottles quite nicely; only $13). For what it's worth, I just sent 5 different boxes of "salad dressing" out and all five arrived at their destinations 3 days later in excellent condition. I bag all my bottles and wrap them twice in bubble wrap--deadspace is filled with paper so that everything is nice and snug. I tape the edges of the box as well.

Just throwing my experience out there...

 

I highly doubt the bottles were damaged. As the OP said, they sent the rest of the contents along and nothing smelled like stale beer. The remaining contents would have smelled horrific had there been a break. I'd guess they heard sloshing and if it wasn't marked liquid they decided to open it and take a look and found beer.

 

Excellent advice. Always pack the box completely tight so that absolutely nothing can move around in the box. I don't usually bag bottles and cans, but it is a very good idea to put them in zip lock bags.

 

Thanks. This is interesting. I am ignorant to the process of how my boxes get from A to B. I still don't understand where throwing boxes comes into this process. I thought it would be more automated with belt lines and scanners sorting where things went. Is it really necessary to grab them by hand and toss them through the air? Sounds like tough work. We should buy these guys a beer (the ones who don't break packages).

 

Most sortation does occur with belt lines and scanners and such, especially with their standard boxes/letters. But with boxes that aren't there's, they can be in any size and shape and weight, it can be real tough to build a system that can handle anything you throw at it. Plus things fall off of belt lines occasionally. I don't think any of the carriers (at least the one I used to work for at HQ in logistics) have a way to automate the truck/container load, at least not 100%.

 

Do some research on here and you will find plenty of stories of folks that have shipped through UPS and FedEx and had issues, so I would not say that anyone should rule out USPS any more than they would the others. Things happen to boxes from time to time, with all of the carriers.

 

A couple of years ago, a trade partner sent 3x PsuedoSue, 1x Sosus and an NG Wild Ale, but his girlfriend packed it and used USPS. She crammed everything into a small box with 1 layer of bubble wrap and nothing else. I missed the delivery and had to come to the local post office to pick up the box. They brought it out in a plastic container because the box was soaking wet and reeked of fermented sweet juicy smell. They never asked what was in it, just gave it to me. I guess since it was at the ultimate destination, they didn't care. Anywhere else before it reaching the destination, my guess would be that they will open it and "discard" it. At least the trend continues that they don't give a crap about people violating Federal law prohibiting alcohol shipping via USPS.

 

Boxes travel in large shipping containers full of hundreds of other boxes. Those containers arrive at hubs and facilities and all of the packages need to be unloaded and sorted based on destination. There aren't machines that can take the boxes from the shipping containers and set them on a conveyor belt. Nor are there machines that can take them off the conveyor belt and stack them into the correct shipping container once they are sorted. That's all done by hand. Yes, there is a lot of automation at big hubs and sort facilities, but from the time you drop a box off to the time it reaches it's destination, it's probably handled by no fewer than 8-10 people (depending on how far it goes). Not everyone has the care or devotion to handle every box with the utmost care. It's unfortunate, but it's reality.

When you pack a box, if you wouldn't feel comfortable dropping it from about chest-high onto a hard floor, pack it better. I've got a buddy who sends me regular boxes that could survive the apocalypse. There really is no such thing as too much packaging. Spending a few extra bucks on supplies and the added weight to the shipment will save you from having to replace beer in the future.

 

Makes alot more sense now. Thanks.

 

This is a really great summary. I was a package handler at UPS during grad school here at the air hub, and things are both better and worse than people would probably assume. I never really saw employees being deliberately destructive with boxes, but the sheer volume of packages moving around the facility, especially this time of year, means that only so much care is really possible: packages fall off of belts; stacks of boxes fall over inside air shipping cans; recycle carts can run over packages on the ground; rows of boxes inside tractor trailers fall over when their foundations collapse under the weight, etc. Additionally, especially for packages going on airplanes, EVERY box is required to be picked up, hand scanned, and quickly rotated to look for hazardous material labels. Sometimes they spin out of your hand on the floor; sometimes the overhead scanner doesn't work and the handler has to awkwardly shift and balance the box to use a hand scanner. At the end of the process, that box has been kicked, spun, fell a few feet somewhere, was probably crushed by another box, and had a door shut on it. And that's at one facility on one stop of the journey to you.

The moral is: pack those boxes as well as you can and hope for the best.