Are these people for real?

[Ed Kennell 38,194]

I just got a PM from Jim @elcamino/wheelhorse.      He says he just had a letter returned that he sent to me in June,2021.      

 

I wonder how many times that letter went round the world in 7 months.

[SPINJIM 1,981]

In this cold weather, where would you rather be, New Jersey or Hawaii ?    

[clueless 3,002]

When you do get your package it should come with some frequent flyer miles .

[8ntruck 7,012]

After I retired, we spent several months in our Michigan location.  We filled out forwarding papers in our Missouri location for the post office.  That only worked for about 80% of the mail.  No particular pattern as to what got forwarded and what didn't.  When we would go back to the Mo. location to check the property,  a mix of junk mail and first class mail was waiting for us. 

[formariz 11,987]

As far as mail goes the very interesting thing for us is that any correspondence from Social Security almost never arrives here. Both my wife’s and mine. We have to always call and they always tell us the dates they were sent on. At that time they mail it again. Then one will show up in a week or two but never all of it.

[squonk 41,134]

2 hours ago, Ed Kennell said:

I just got a PM from Jim @elcamino/wheelhorse.      He says he just had a letter returned that he sent to me in June,2021.      

 

I wonder how many times that letter went round the world in 7 months.

Was there a check in it?  

[formariz 11,987]

4 hours ago, squonk said:

I'd love a Shillelagh in my old age! 

This one is a wee short, but by the time I get to needing it Ill be hunched over so much that it will be the right length.

[Handy Don 12,232]

These stories sound a lot like airline "lost luggage". Once had bag go missing on Chicago to NYC. Not critical as I was homeward bound. Filed the claim and a couple days later found out my bag was in some Caribbean island. I offered to go get it if they would just give me the tickets for the flights. They didn't bite and the bag got delivered two days later. 

[Ed Kennell 38,194]

2 hours ago, squonk said:

Was there a check in it?  

Dunno,  but Jimmy says he owes me 15 bucks for a pulley.    But I owe him two suitcase weights.   

[Stormin 9,981]

 I'll never criticize our postal service again after reading that. 

[squonk 41,134]

20 minutes ago, Ed Kennell said:

Dunno,  but Jimmy says he owes me 15 bucks for a pulley.    But I owe him two suitcase weights.   

Grab a couple of clapped out suitcases, fill them with rocks and hand them to him in June! 

[rjg854 11,374]

Just saw a report of a lady that just got a letter from her husband that was sent during WW2

[AMC RULES 37,130]

All but 3 weeks for this carb rebuild kit to show up today from only 65 miles away in NJ.

Edit...

Aww, don't be so sad people. I took the day off, rebuilt my carb, and couldn't be happier with the results.    

Nothing but thankful for our USPS workers.   

Edited January 12, 2022 by AMC RULES

[elcamino/wheelhorse 9,313]

@squonk The cash was still in the envelope for the pulley you picked up in June  , in my PM to Ed made sure he received funds for suitcase weights. Remember the transportation service you are expecting to the BS this June if I ever pick up your engine.  Hate to forget the engine due to your witty sayings.   

[squonk 41,134]

25 minutes ago, elcamino/wheelhorse said:

@squonk The cash was still in the envelope for the pulley you picked up in June  , in my PM to Ed made sure he received funds for suitcase weights. Remember the transportation service you are expecting to the BS this June if I ever pick up your engine.  Hate to forget the engine due to your witty sayings.   

I would hate to forget to strap down that Commando to the trailer.

[8ntruck 7,012]

Lost luggage.  I left on a trip to Spain from Orlando.  I got to Spain, watched all the luggage come to the pick up area, mine didn't show. 

 

Over to the airline service desk, report my luggage missing.  She taps on the computer for a couple of minutes and reports that they know where my luggage is - Cleveland, and it will arrive the next day on the same flight I just arrived on.  At that point, I just started laughing.  As tried as I was, it was like the punch line to a bad joke. 

 

The rep looks confused,  and says "you're laughing".  I replied that there was no point in getting upset, so I might as well laugh about it and let them do their thing to get the luggage to me.  I gave her my itinerary for the next couple of days and went to arrange transportation to my hotel for a hot shower and a nap.  The luggage missed me the next day, but caught up to me the day after. 

[formariz 11,987]

Three days past due date and still no new delivery date.

[wh500special 2,184]

Last winter I had a small USPS package take around a month and a half to go from Ohio to Illinois.  I think all it said most of that time was the same "arriving late" message you're seeing now.  You'll eventually get it, but it's anybody's guess as to when.  As I recall, mine finally showed up days before they updated the tracking information too.  So hold out hope that it's already ended its Hawaiian vacation and is on its way to the Garden State.

 

My wife signed us up for some kind of service the USPS offers where they photograph your mail (just the outside!) at the local PO and send a daily email notice of what to expect in the physical mailbox.  While I think this is primarily a gimmick and certainly is costing them something in dollars and time, it is handy if you're expecting something significant.  And apparently they photo every single piece anyway.  Surprise!

 

At least 1/3 the time the physical daily delivery doesn't match what they showed for that day.  Most recently we had one of our financial statements get photographed to show it was coming and yet it took it over a week to actually hit our mailbox.  I don't know if they lost it in the post office or delivered it somewhere else, but it was somewhat worrisome since it has information I'd rather nobody else know.

 

I've not historically been a USPS detractor, but I think they need to consider letting UPS, FedEx, DHL, et al handle the packages and just stick to letters.  Nobody beats them on letter delivery efficiency but they seem to struggle with packages.  Also, why not raise the price of the junk mail high enough to generate some revenue and/or get rid of a big chunk of that worthless, wasteful garbage at the same time?  A side benefit would be a lot less fraud to senior citizens and to the less savvy folks who open and reply to the "urgent" and "important" scam pieces of mail disguised to look like legitimate services. 

 

Of course as it is I think it's fully possible to heat your home through the coldest of winters if you saved all of your junkmail, political ads, CVS receipts, and Amazon boxes and just threw them in your wood burner.  If we could also find a use for all the Wal Mart and grocery store plastic shopping bags we'd be set.

 

Hang in there Cas!

Steve

Edited January 13, 2022 by wh500special

[Ed Kennell 38,194]

2 hours ago, wh500special said:

Also, why not raise the price of the junk mail high enough to generate some revenue and/or get rid of a big chunk of that worthless, wasteful garbage at the same time?  A side benefit would be a lot less fraud to senior citizens and to the less savvy folks who open and reply to the "urgent" and "important" scam pieces of mail disguised to look like legitimate services. 

Wow, what an ingenious idea.   Did you run it by your federal reps.?

5 Shocking Statistics - How Junk Mail Mark….url5 Shocking Statistics - How Junk Mail Mark….url

 

 

[tunahead72 2,421]

@formariz  I forget how exactly, but there's a spot on the USPS website where you can ask them to find out where your package is currently and have them move it along.  I had a package stuck in Philadelphia for several days recently, got in touch with USPS, they called me later that day and I had my package the next day.

 

[wh500special 2,184]

5 hours ago, Ed Kennell said:

Wow, what an ingenious idea.   Did you run it by your federal reps.?

5 Shocking Statistics - How Junk Mail Mark….url 281 B · 3 downloads 5 Shocking Statistics - How Junk Mail Mark….url 281 B · 3 downloads

 

 

Thanks for the compliment.  I’m full of so

much…stuff …I’m bound to have a good idea once in a while.  
 

Those stats are amazing!  Intuitively we knew it was wasteful but I had no idea of the absolute scope.
 

The size of this country and our consumption habits are truly astounding.  
 

The first job I ever had was working in a little sweatshop that made jumper cables.  These weren’t just any jumper cables, they were the ones that professionals like Tow truck drivers @ClassicTractorProfessor would use.  Super heavy wire and monster clamps with springs so strong I could hardly squeeze them.  These suckers could moonlight as tow chain to drag the Queen Mary out of the water. 
 

We shipped somewhere around 2 or 3 thousand sets a week ( I think.  Was a long time ago but it was a lot).  I’ve never seen a pair like them in any store.  Even the most expensive ones at your favorite auto parts store pale in comparison.  

Where do they all go?
 

At my last job we made a bunch of stuff, but one of the things was a handle for those 96 gallon trash cans you roll out to the curb and the automatic truck picks up.  There is only one of these handles per trash can. We made 6000 per day.  so that means our customer was making 6000 of those things a day.  We also made 10000 shovel handles per day, and we were a tiny, tiny niche maker of those things.  
 

Again, where do they all go?

 

A friend of mine worked at the third largest bedframe maker in the US. They made something like 20000 bed frames per day.  Almost all of them are made from steel angle iron that is made from re-rolled railroad track rail (if you’ve ever tried to drill a hole in a bed frame only to break a drill bit, now you know why) because we’ve given up on rail as the cheapest transport conveyance. 
 

I’m convinced there is a giant hole somewhere that they throw all these things into. 
 

last one…

 

I heard a story on NPR a couple years ago about a mattress recycling business somewhere in New Jersey.  I thought how could that possibly be a viable thing?  How could there possibly be enough of anything there to make a business?  As it turns out, in the USA we throw away over 50000 mattresses per day.  Yes, Fifty thousand.  Every.  Single.  Day. 
 

 Each one has about 25 pounds of steel in it. So that’s 1.25 million pounds of steel thrown in the trash each day. Plus all the other stuff. 
 

Whoa. 

certainly one of the next big things will be mining all the raw materials back out of the landfills that blot this planet. Can you imagine all the iron, glass, copper, aluminum, and whatever else is just laying there so close to the surface under nothing harder than dirt?

 

The absolute scale of the amount of junk - and junk mail - we create is impossible to appreciate.  The scale of things really brings credence to the idea that small changes broadcast over the whole population really do matter. 

A lot of society’s problems really don’t seem that hard to fix, but have been coated with so many layers of complexity it’s hard to make progress.  I have no idea how to work out the logistics of getting a letter cheaply from one end of the country to another, but seeing a way to

clear the overburden of junk mail seems easy.  And certainly this would allow the PO to do more with the resources they already have. 
 

Much of this over complexity probably stems from so many things being committee driven.  Everybody is in charge yet nobody is in charge.  There’s little reward for an individual to stick her neck out, yet lots of castigation if they get something wrong.  
 

(sigh)

 

I’m not naive.  There are complex things in life…how to deal with belligerent people, how a tractor magneto really works, organic chemistry, power generation turbines, etc.  But we can fix the simple stuff when we recognize it.  Or maybe try to stop the snowball before it gets too big. 
 

I never considered contacting my congressman about the mail.   I’m usually just the kind of person to sit back on the sidelines and judge other people’s actions.   Maybe tomorrow should be the day.  

 

Sorry to derail this so far off

course!

 

Steve

Edited January 14, 2022 by wh500special

[kpinnc 12,065]

This thread has me worried. I ordered a new light switch for the Bronco. The Cole Hersee rocker type.

 

Anyway, it's coming from West Va, and I'm in NC. The distribution hub for this area is in Charlotte, and most items are delivered next day once the depart.

 

Tracking says it came to Charlotte 3 days ago, then went to Louisville KY, then Greenville SC, now back to Charlotte. I guess it will head to Florida or Georgia next...

 

And some of you talk about months long deliveries? 

[JPWH 6,034]

I had a package come from CA to Ellenwood, Ga (about 45 miles from me) in 2 days.It then shówed leaving Ellenwood for 4 days before I started making phone calls. I found out it's next destination is Macon, Ga about 45 miles away but does not leave Ellenwood until the truck is full. Ellenwood to Thomaston is an 8 day delivery time. If a package goes through Atlanta I get it next day. From Macon I get it the same day.

Edited January 14, 2022 by JPWH

[formariz 11,987]

So yesterday still no update. I go to Post Office basically get a “what do you want me to do attitude “ and they can’t tell me anything about package’s location or arrival date. 
I then call vendor . They look it up come back on phone laughing about the tracking record. They are very apologetic and immediately send me another one giving me a tracking number. It is supposed to arrive next Tuesday.

 Then this morning I look up tracking for first package and there it is it arrives today after being sent from Honolulu to again a wrong town, and then finally to the correct destination. It did arrive today. Now let’s see what happens with second one that I will have to send back.

[8ntruck 7,012]

@wh500special  I retired from a company that made steel wheels for the automotive industry.  We had the contract for the spare wheel on GM pickup trucks.  We ran that job probably 6 shifts every week, averaging somewhere between 3000 and 4000 wheels per shift. 

 

It struck me one day - every time that press hit, it was for another GM pickup.  Like you said, where do they all go?

 

@formariz glad to see your wayward package got delivered.  If that is the way the packages are going to be routed, the least they could do is to stamp the package showing all the locations where it has been.....

Edited January 15, 2022 by 8ntruck