Oh no, not the dreaded UPS "In Transit". That's UPS-speak for "We have no idea where your package is."
UPS's tracking system is basically a front. UPS's whole business, their whole operation was never designed to track individual packages. When UPS created their business, none of the technology necessary to track individual packages was even on the horizon. Building a tracking system such as Fed Ex uses today would have, at the time UPS was getting started, required more vacuum tubes than existed on the earth.
When newer carriers such as Federal Express designed their businesses, the necessary technologies, affordable lasers and the bar-code readers they make possible, affordable, practical, powerful computers, microprocessors, integrated circuits, LCD displays, and the portable data terminals they make possible, radio and high-speed wired data communications, networks, etc., were all just becoming available. Federal Express's whole business was designed from day one, and built from the ground up with the goal of tracking individual packages.
If you're a package delivery service and you want Individual package tracking then it has to be systematic. Something this complex has to be part of how your system is designed and operates.
UPS has tried to cobble tracking onto an antiquated system that was never designed to have it. As a result, UPS's tracking doesn't work very well.
Furthermore, when UPS decided to make this change, instead of going to existing vendors of the technology they needed, UPS tried to design it themselves. You see, UPS has an engineering organization. But, that organization's prior experience was in designing conveyor belts and sorting machines. It's a bit of a leap to microprocessors, bar code readers, and satellite networks. UPS's internal staff floundered horribly.
How do I know? I used to work for Norand. We manufactured bar coding equipment, printers, and some network equipment for, among others Federal Express and Overnight Air Express. We actually bid quite a nice system for UPS and they rejected our bid declaring that they could do the whole thing themselves much cheaper.
The persuaded the Federal Communcations Commission to give them special radio spectrum space to use a new miracle modulation technique, ACSB. One of their ACSB beta sites was just about fifty miles south of Norand's headquarters. That explains the antenna array that sprouted up on our building pointed south. UPS never got ASCB to work and ended up using good old FM in violation of their license.
Eventually, UPS bought several companies in related technologies, one of them, Tomorrow Inc., just south of here in Salem, Oregon, a developer of GPS tracking technology. With these new additions, they should have had the technology needed. But, UPS proceeded to enforce the UPS culture including uniform dress codes, on these high-tech companies. All of the best people left almost instantly. I know a great software engineer who left Tomorrow in a dispute over the length of his beard.
Federal Express and other carriers originally developed their tracking systems just for their own internal use. If you're going to offer a money back guarantee on something as sporty as overnight delivery all over the world, then you'd better have your processes under control.
But, as UPS floundered with theirs, Fed Ex saw tracking as a market differentiator... something they could offer that UPS could not. So, they started to promote it. They offered a website where customers could even check their own packages. And it caught on. Customers liked tracking and started to switch from UPS to Fed Ex at least in part because of it.
UPS couldn't let that go unanswered, so they cobbled together what they could and created a facade of a tracking system. They really don't know where your package is. They have a vauge idea of when it was last seen, but packages are not individually tracked.
Several months ago, a UPS package bound for me just disappeared within UPS's system. It was scanned into a sorting facility in Georgia, and lost. The tracking site reported "In Transit." About a week later, it suddenly appeared in a depot here in Oregon. I called UPS and double-checked. They had no idea where the package was for that week or how it got from Georgia to Oregon. That's not really my idea of tracking.
Let's just say that it's a good thing that UPS runs trucks and not boats because the tightest ship in the shipping business has a lot of leaks.
So, it's not 1sks's fault that UPS has no idea where your package is. As UPS told me when I asked about my missing "In Transit" package "these things usually turn up."
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Chuck
Balisongs -- because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
http://www.balisongcollector.com
[This message has been edited by Gollnick (edited 08-27-2000).]
