I may have spent a chunk of my working life project managing logistics projects, but global logistics still boggle my mind.
Recently I bought a new laptop. For various reasons, one being I wanted a slightly non-standard hardware configuration, I ordered direct from the manufacturer. In doing so I knew that the machine would be shipped direct to me from China, because like most things these days that’s where they’re manufactured.
When it was eventually despatched it was trusted to the care of UPS, and slightly to my astonishment (especially given the relative lack of protective packaging) it actually arrived in one piece. Thanks to the wonders of trackable packages I was able to watch the somewhat byzantine route the laptop took to get to me. It went like this (all times are local time):
| Thursday (day 1); late evening | Ready for collection from Hefei, China |
| Wednesday; evening | Collected by UPS (And they call this is expedited delivery!) |
| Thursday (day 8); very early morning | Leaves Shanghai on route to … |
| Thursday; early morning | Arrival at Incheon, South Korea (Oh, its going east so will come via LA or JFK. Not a bit of it.) |
| Thursday midday | Leave Incheon bound for … |
| Thursday, early morning | I don’t believe it! … Almaty, Kazakhstan, where it eventually clears customs in mid afternoon |
| Thursday; early evening | Departs Almay on its way to … |
| Thursday early evening | Warsaw, Poland |
| Thursday; mid-evening | And we’re away from Warsaw on the next leg to … |
| Thursday; late evening | Cologne, Germany |
| Friday; not much after midnight | Leaving Cologne bound for … |
| Friday; before dawn | Stansted (At last we’ve arrived in the UK, but, phew, we need a little rest now!) |
| Monday; before dawn | Leaving Stansted going to … |
| Monday; 17 minutes after leaving Stansted | Feltham, near Heathrow (How in 17 minutes unless it’s on a helicopter?) |
| Monday; within minutes of arrival | Leaving Feltham on the final leg to me |
| Monday; midday | Finally delivered to my door! |
That’s 12 elapsed days and countless thousands of miles in eight hops through some very unlikely places.
At each step along the way I was having a little guess as to where it would go next, and it’s safe to say I got every one wrong except the last stop in Feltham — and that only because I know it’s where my local UPS depot is!
I’m disappointed they didn’t manage to work in Kuala Lumpur, Osaka and Barcelona along the way!