Shipping

Sunday May 22, 2005 - 11:25AM EDT

There is a story about how Federal Express was started. The founder wrote a paper in college about routing packages through a central hub facility then sending out to the location. Not just directly sending it from point to point. The guy apparently got a C on the paper and his professor told him that it was ludicrous. Well if anyone has ever tracked a package through FedEx then you know all the weird places your package will go before getting to you. I think the idea behind central hubs is to track packages easier and it probably has something to do with how the current system of air freight works. I think the idea is instead of every FedEx drop off place having to figure out the destination of all the various packages they receive it is easier for those places to just ship those pacakges to a central hub that is specialized in sorting and figuring that stuff out. Those smaller satellite facilites can focus on a simpler task and it probably is cheaper that way. Then from the main hub packages are sent to the proper places. With each satelitte facility getting packages to deliver to a various places it is better to send them to a central location so that all the packages going to the same place can first be gathered in one place then sent off all in one trip. So now you understand why your FedEx packages go so many weird places before they get to you.