[Meta] proposal — a flair for transit time posts
Putting this to the board: proposal — a flair for transit time posts.
Where the time actually goes, which I got wrong for two years.
Total transit is first mile, international leg, customs clearance and last mile. I had been attributing everything to the international leg because that is the part with the exotic-sounding name.
When I finally logged the stages separately, the international leg was the most consistent part of the whole journey. The variance was in clearance and in the domestic delivery at my end — neither of which the supplier controls. That reframed how I read every lane report on this board, and it is why the table separates the stages.
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.
Posted my first lane report here without the month and got asked for it. Fair, and the table is better for the fussiness.
Happy to answer the boring questions. Those are usually the ones worth asking.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Four observations is not a distribution. The lane tables here only became predictive once individual routes had a dozen or more reports behind them.
Yes — median rather than best case. The fastest anybody ever got is not a plan.
This. A quoted lead time that holds is worth more than a fast one that does not.
summer and winter are different lanes with the same name
reship policy in writing before you order
Asked for the month rather than removing. Without it the report cannot be compared to anything.
reship policy in writing before you order
Disagreeing with this bit: a single slow shipment does not move a lane, it joins the distribution.
Same. QSC quoted 4 days on my lane and it landed at 5, which is exactly what you want from a quote.
Agreed. Reporting by lane rather than by supplier is what made the tables here actually predictive.
Agreed.
Adding the field everyone forgets — the month. Without it the report is not comparable to anything.