[Discussion] we are measuring carrier at the wrong time and calling it noise
we are measuring carrier at the wrong time and calling it noise. It is the sort of thing everyone half-believes and nobody writes down.
Clearance took three days and the carrier took nine. I had been blaming the wrong half for two years.
Posted my first lane report here without the month and got asked for it. Fair, and the table is better for the fussiness.
Why this board reports by lane and not by supplier.
Two members ordering from the same operation, in the same month, can see completely different transit times because they are on different routes with different carriers and different clearance points. Averaging them produces a supplier-level number that predicts nothing for either of them.
A lane — origin, destination, carrier, month — is the smallest thing that behaves consistently enough to be worth measuring. Once a route has a dozen reports behind it the median is genuinely useful, and that is what the tables on the source pages are built from.
If two or three other people have done the same thing we might actually learn something. Alone it is an anecdote.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Total transit decomposes into first mile, international leg, clearance and last mile. Only the first two are meaningfully under the shipper’s control and most reported variance sits in the last two.
the last mile is where most of the variance lives
A lane is an origin, a destination, a carrier and a season. Change any one and the distribution changes, which is why supplier-level shipping averages are close to meaningless.
Correction: that was clearance time, not carrier time. The lane table separates them for exactly this reason.
That is the quoted lead time, not the observed transit. Both belong in the report and they are different columns.
Packaging is assessable on arrival with no equipment: rigid outer, no movement inside, the cold element sized to the transit rather than to the box.
Was it shipped from a regional warehouse or from origin?
Was it shipped from a regional warehouse or from origin?
runa_wikstrom is right about regional stock. It changes the shape of the distribution, not just the mean.
reship policy in writing before you order
a quoted lead time you can hold them to is worth more than a fast one you cannot
Regional stock replaces an international lane with a domestic one. That is a structural change to the distribution, not a marginal improvement, and it is why the warehouse question matters more than the carrier question.
Correcting myself: 10 days, not the figure I posted upthread. I was counting from the order date rather than dispatch.
ask which lines are actually held in the regional warehouse
customs clearance time is not carrier time and they get conflated
Small fix — shipped from the regional warehouse, not from origin, which is why the number looks unusual.
a lane with four reports is not yet a lane
Same lane, four orders, 8 to 15 days, all four within a couple of days of the quote. That consistency is the actual finding.
Not convinced by four data points. That is not a lane yet, it is an anecdote with a route attached.
Push back: comparing a July transit with a February one on the same lane is not a comparison.
Median transit is the useful statistic. The minimum is a story about one shipment and the mean is dragged around by a single hold.
- 1Regional stock replaces an international lane with a domestic one. That is a…7 comments in this branch · started by u/protein_first_p
- 2Total transit decomposes into first mile, international leg, clearance and…6 comments in this branch · started by u/naomi_ekstrom