upschuck
Well-Known Member
I late going to help the neighbor put up her tall Christmas tree, so I'd better hop to it. Maybe that will make him admire me too. 
Non UPS andmirer
- Thread starter Youguysareefficient
- Start date
I late going to help the neighbor put up her tall Christmas tree, so I'd better hop to it. Maybe that will make him admire me too. Youguysareefficient
Member
Yep, coast of california. Can't stop won't stop growing. Not so much ride the local wave, but more so I was born into the local wave. I grew up at farmers market, literally, in diapers slaying vege's. Its how I currently make a living, just getting a little more serious and dialed. When I started on my own I had an Isuzu box refrigerated truck, a notebook, and a crayon!
That's awesome. We should grow all our own food. Better yet, every neighborhood work together and one person grow lettuce, one cabbage, one etc etc etc. Its popular here, but you are correct, many fail, because they do not look at the "the last mile."
Well done sir!
Sort of. There is a lot of health department concerns with food sales. For storage and transportation its county health departments. For stuff over $5,000 I require GAP certification (food safety program), private but related to USDA. Lots of big changes recently with that. Seeing a lot more million dollar stainless steel harvesting rigs. There are procedures for cleanliness and hygiene. Bleach is possible but GAP certification requires an acid washing system. Oddly enough, I was the first small program to contact the health department. Woops, competition is gonna hate me.
Somewhere before I stated the demographics I was looking at. However, here I'm just looking for a little info on the effect population density and delivery. I won't trouble you with income, education, age, etc. Often innovation is an application or cross reference of concepts, gaining ideas from other fields. UPS is not the focus, but it also should not be ignored. However, I promise I won't talk to the FEDEX guys! I did look at a study on the efficiency of USPS rural delivery, which was interesting. They were so much quicker in the country due to not walking the beat. Then I saw the post man in town talking to every neighbor, lol.
I wouldn't be able to help all the plugs. "Hello mam, I have a large package for you..."
Info should come from everywhere. This is just a small piece of perspective to consider. For example, one person stated the truck being designed for delivery with the open door. While I won't be running doorless, I will remember this when choosing rear door design. And I haven't failed yet! But being self employed is a risk no doubt. UPS isn't going out anytime soon.
Thankyou sir. I am using something waterproof as I'm icing, but need to remember that for stuff like berries.
Lol. I'm non ups, and admire your guys work! I actually do kinda like frogs too.
Well thanks guys that was some good perspective. Its a challenge to figure this stuff out, and I imagine there was a point UPS just had to determine some rough numbers. Its pretty awesome that they are so dialed on their routes and stops possible. I think that is the key thing I learned and maybe how to focus delivery efficiency.
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MechLift
Well-Known Member
It takes awhile to be able to deliver 20-30 stops/hr.
It won't be a straight line equation becaue the quality of roads, traffic, customer interaction and other factors will figure in. Even 150 residents/sq mile is pretty sparse because some apartment dense areas can have 5000 residents/sq mile in areas I have served. You can probably get your best rough numbers by doing dry runs in various zip codes and using cesus data to give you demograhics for the areas. It's a worthy exercise, one FedEx is too lazy to do for better route balancing. So; 3 runs in strictly residential of 300, 600, and 1200 residents/sq mile; 3 runs in retail zoning of strip mall, mega-mall, free standing establishments, etc. You will start getting a rough idea of what matters for speed of delivery.
BrownArmy
Well-Known Member
Talk to an established local craft beer company in your area...they've gone through the same process you're going through.
Before driving for UPS, I drove a truck for a smallish organic wine/beer distributor across the entire state of North Carolina, delivering to Whole Foods, random wine/beer stores, bars, etc.
UPS drivers are generally in a fairly proscribed area, with a pretty set routine; when I drove the beer truck, it was all over the map.
Good luck, everyone needs to eat good food!
Before driving for UPS, I drove a truck for a smallish organic wine/beer distributor across the entire state of North Carolina, delivering to Whole Foods, random wine/beer stores, bars, etc.
UPS drivers are generally in a fairly proscribed area, with a pretty set routine; when I drove the beer truck, it was all over the map.
Good luck, everyone needs to eat good food!
Youguysareefficient
Member
Yeah its a rough number, mainly making an educated guess of vans to cover the west coast. Even if a solid number could be determined, variables such as driver would completely change it. I think going with a curve type increase (ive been at it 15 hours excuse my lack of vocabulary). Like worst case senario 100 stops at 50 sq/mile and 250 at 500 sq/mile, 300 at 1500 sq/mile, etc. Just develop that equation and apply it to excel and boom. The USA. Its all guestimating. I know for sure I need one van to start. lol.
From this ive learned that ups must have software that develops their root times with actual data. Long term I'll have to look and see if they use a 3rd party..
a beer sounds good about now
and thanks, its truly something I believe in. Watching the shortcomings of local food my whole life, Im gonna change it.
i dont know if I mentioned this, but where i live you all are the only ones that deliver. The damn post office gets lost. Fedex delivers stuff somewhere apparantly, but we've never got it.
