I ordered a Thinkpad laptop recently and received free shipping, which I assumed was going to be of the usual “stick it on a UPS truck for a couple weeks” variety. Once I received the tracking number I settled in for a leisurely, days-long observation of my laptop’s journey. However, the trip was over almost before I knew about it. The laptop left Hong Kong on the evening of Feb 11 (their local time) and arrived on my doorstep in Washington State the morning of Feb 12. In between it went from Alaska to Ontario (so it wasn’t a straight shot over, it had to backtrack) before it arrived in Seattle. It was roughly a 28 hour travel time. That’s an amazingly short span, especially considering customs clearance (it was held up for a few hours for “REASONS BEYOND UPS’ CONTROL”), loading and unloading. I recommend John McPhee’s New Yorker article about UPS in the April 18, 2005 issue (blurb), also in his book “Uncommon Carriers,” (hardback is only $6.67 at Amazon right now) for those of you as fascinated as I am by these logistics.

While researching the ins and outs of international shipping I ran across a Logistics Magazine article (bottom of the page) about how Lush (Canadian retailer of handmade soaps and other nice smelling things that get you clean) worked with UPS to improve their shipping process to the U.S. Their Internet sales were primarily from customers in the United States and each order was handled separately and manually, including dealing with customs. As their sales grew, the process became too burdensome. UPS provided a system that consolidates their U.S. orders into one large shipment that clears customs once, and is then separated for individual delivery after arrival in the states.