UPS hates me and the feeling is mutual

[mimosatexas]

fedex here sucks ass.  My brother in law is actually a pilot with fedex and I still refuse to use them.  My UPS guy kicks complete and total ass and I have a UPS store literally 100 ft away from my shop.  They give me excellent service as well.

[alan802]

It's crazy, I feel the same way about Fedex as some do about UPS.  There have been a few issues here and there but we're receiving on average 70 cases per day and shipping out 12-15 and the number of issues is very low.  Our dropoff driver could be better, he's a little bit lazy and when we've got a huge truckload, he tends to call in sick but his replacement guys have been great and I'd rather get one of them to be honest as our regular.  Our pickup driver is awesome and will wait around or even help us process stuff he's picking up if we haven't gotten it ready yet. 

[ZooCity]

The key thing with UPS is to get a rep.  They'll take care of it for you to the best of their ability.  Talking on the phone line is often completely ludicrous.   UPS does in fact have direct contact with drivers.  You can't call them but they can call you form a restricted number.  They've done this for us multiple times to arrange a meet up or pickup when errors occurred on something time sensitive.  I've actually met them at their rendezvous points with the co. truck to snag shipments that they couldn't normally get to us until later in the day.

They've also screwed us pretty hard on a number of occasions but, with the help of our rep, we've been at least refunded.  They do give us a rate break, not a huge one but we're on 100wt and it definitely helps.  We do very little shipping in and out bound compared to most outfits. 

I agree that the dedicated fedex ground and express pickups would not be optimal but you could sched ground daily and then run express packages to the nearest pickup as needed.

The 4.9% increase coming next quarter with UPS will definitely suck for everyone.

[SteveS]

I spent a month with our FedEx rep before I jumped ship from UPS. Rates are negotiable and in the end, we got FedEx to beat UPS rates by about 8%. That's a difference in our scenario of about $300 per month. That's a big savings for us and the desktop ship manager software is network friendly and allows us to have more than one computer generate shipping labels and it also builds a information database for us that we can extract marked up shipping information that we use in our invoicing. It's pretty nice actually.

[brandon]

So yeah, just happened again. Starting to think someone is stealing some of our shipments. Something is not right.

Started using FedEx last week and all is well. So far haha.

Just curious anyone use USPS and have them pick up every day or other?  A few cases to 30 cases or so?

We use them every week for our international shipments and they are great. And about 1/3rd to 1/4th the price of UPS or FedEx.

Anyone's opinion or info would be awesome. Thanks!

[TCT]

Pretty sure for domestic shipments for say a case of shirts they are quite a bit more expensive. I had a customer ship me 4 cases of shirts from 3 hrs away and they paid like $220!!! Now, I imagine they insured them and did whatever the post office sold them on, but that kind of blew my mind. I remember checking maybe a dozen times(last time maybe a year ago) and I seem to remember it not being worth it. Plus the carriers bitch if they bring you cases.

Are you shipping coast to coast? We use a regional carrier that hits like 7 states, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper than UPS and FedEx AND there is no residential surcharge. I know there are a handful of regional carriers out there, some partner with others to cover a larger foot print also.

[brandon]

yeah, our problem is we have a lot of touring bands. Coast to coast for sure.

I am going to stick with USPS for overseas as they are cheap and within 10 business days and now FedEx going forward within the States.

But you bring up food for thought with regional companies. Thank you!