Bob La Londe wrote:

It Might Ship As Early as Today

Ok, does anybody in the machinery business ever really mean it when they
say
that? If they do mean it are the ever successful?

I've purchased four pieces of equipment in the last month that needed to
be
sent by truck. Not one item shipped when they said, and not one item was
delivered by the estimated delivery date even after it was shipped.

Shipping companies in the LTL (less than a full truck-load) business
save HUGE amounts of money by scheduling shipments to minimize travel,
and avoid empty or partially-empty trucks. They pass a little bit
of that savings on to their customers. (As little as they can get away
with, of course!) So, your shipment has to wait for another big hunk
of something going approximately the same way. My lathe came on a truck
with printing presses and something that was dropped off earlier.
They devote a HUGE effort to this scheduling problem, the(ir) savings are
huge. Assuming you are shipping these LTL, the machinery dealers are
at the mercy of the LTL shippers to tell them WHEN the truck will get there
to pick up the shipment. And, they generally won't give you a schedule
until AFTER you commit to the shipment.


Interestingly in the communications hardware business
(alarm/telephone/vdeo/etc) my vendors ship on time 99.5% of the time, and
it
arrives on time just as often. On the occasions when there is a delay
they let me know right away.

Obviously the "Just In Time" model doesn't work for some industries. LOL.
The shipment of big machines is a totally different business from FedEx,
UPS, etc. shipping thousands of small boxes on one truck. If you MUST
have it in short order, you can hire the whole truck, but you'll pay
a LOT more for that service.

Jon