OT: How USPS destroys American jobs

I have noticed that as well. Then, upon using the magnifier, I found that the mailing came from Bulgaria, Philippines, Malta, you name it.

AFAICT the only way to get decent shipping rates is to move the business overseas. Which is what many folks I talked to (and one client) have done. In one case that has wiped out most of their staff or over 30 Californian jobs within a single layoff event.

Drones have a wee problem making it across an ocean though.

It doesn't have to if they were smart and re-instituted surface shipping overseas.

Again, why did the USPS discontinue shipments via sea while the Chinese post office did not?

That has cost and is costing lots of American jobs.

The fallacy in your argument is about the role of the USPS. They are not responsible for your or anyone else's business. If you go into business thinking the costs involved will remain forever constant, then you will fail. Services adapt to the market and the markets adapt to the services provided. If no one else provides a service it is because there is no profit in it. Why should the USPS continue to offer unprofitable services?

Get over it.

If you are so certain there is a market for this, you could fill that need and make yourself rich a lot faster than you are doing now.

It is also costing the Chinese government a lot of money.

Your statements have grown as you discuss this more. Before it was "scores" and now it is "lots". I guess "scores" can seem like "lots" if you focus very narrowly, but in the grand scheme of things there are many more jobs destroyed and created every day. I can't imagine your rant is of any value in the US economy.

Like Volkswagen Turbodiesel cars? :-)

But no kidding, those days are to some extent over. For example, already many years ago I bought an oscilloscope engineered in Taiwan and built in mainland China. It was better than the comparable Tektronix scope I looked at and cost about half. Aside from the sales and use tax which we must pay on everything all I paid for shipping and customs paperwork was $15. It arrived in a large heavy box.

Oops. I hope he didn't pay them anything for that shipment.

Why? It arrived promptly within the week when we ordered name patches for our therapy dogs there.

That would take forever unless you move your whole operations to China.

At the PPoE, the owner would insist on buying headsets from China. The samples were quite good enough but the manufactured product was nothing like the samples. They were wired completely differently with different cables and connectors. Since the market was seasonal, we had to disassemble every unit and replace the cable and connectors. It was a rather expensive undertaking. This wasn't unique. The Chinese always pulled stuff like that.

I bought something from a Chinese vendor on Amazon. Free shipping took

Yeah, I wonder sometimes if they spend a week or two to get it out the door. I ordered a TEG from a Chinese vendor and after a month it hadn't arrived. They said they would ship it again. A month later still no TEG. They gave me my money back. Hard to believe it got lost in the mail twice. I figure they just didn't ship it, maybe not in stock or something. It was a larger than typical cell.

I really can't imagine anyone losing business because they can't use the same crappy surface shipping they use from China.

There is something they call ePacket. I think someone explained that, but I forget what it is. It seems to take under a week rather than the usual stuff. I wonder if they use a US warehouse instead of shipping from overseas. Or maybe they have a bunch of product packaged and shipped here already and the actual label goes on the package just before they hand it to the USPS to deliver.

You need to think outside the "box", pun intended. The product is warehoused in China and shipped from there. But it's hard to imagine it would be better to make the product somewhere else.

Often it is just the Chinese customs. Even from Shenzen to here in Taiwan actual shipping often takes not more than two days, but Chinese customs (not Taiwanese import customs) can take up to two weeks.

The other direction is even worse. We had stuff the was stuck in Chinese customs for 3 weeks and then they just rejected it. That took another 3 weeks until we had it back.

If you want to ship enough of them at once then a container full is the way to do it. But I expect the reason they no longer bother is that there is literally no demand for surface parcel mail any more. It takes too long and the hassles of delayed shipments outweighs any savings.

Best UK single parcel price to go the other way I could find was 1kg for

If you think you can make money by doing it for a pittance then good luck to you. USPS has given up on surface for a reason (not profitable).

UK has just shut a major steelworks in Redcar permanently (owned by SSI of Korea) because the Chinese are dumping huge volumes of cheap steel on the world market. After almost a hundred years of steel making it has closed and will never reopen. They ruined the blast furnace with an uncontrolled cool down and yesterday the coke ovens were turned off too. The resulting damage will price any restart out of the market.

(The previous shutdown was a safe orderly one taking months to do)

We don't do manufacturing any more :(

I wonder if anybody has figured out in-flight electrical recharging for drones yet.

Or, maybe you load up the drone with a bunch of cheap carbon-zinc AA cells at takeoff, and it just drops the dead ones as it goes.

The larger military drones that have internal combustion engines could presumably be refueled using a smaller version of the hardware on a fighter jet, but I kind of wonder about the aerodynamics of getting a relatively small drone to stay in the right place, if you used the same tanker aircraft as you would for a fighter. Maybe the "tanker" needs to be a Cessna 152 or something.

Matt Roberds

Drones and autonomous EVs would be used mostly for local deliveries from regional warehouses to residences, businesses, and local pick-up and drop-off points. Rail transport is probably the most efficient for cross-country transport of items between major warehouses. And container ships would be used for most trans-oceanic transport, possibly carrying pre-loaded drones for immediate dispatch once at or near ports.

Air transport can still be used for time-critical shipments.

Paul

If you are going to fuel a large drone from a small one, why bother with the trouble prone fuel-up in mid-flight? Just send a flying gas tank to the drone and let it attach internally in the cargo hold where it isn't buffeted. When the fuel is mostly used let the empty tank fly back for reuse.

Not at all. Example: I bicycle a lot and this means lots of stuff wears out because those things just don't have the quality of cars. That gets expensive. So I do what most avid cyclists do, I run a checklists and order replacement parts in time. I can get a pair of brake pads from Asia for $3 and they work as well or better than those at the bike shop that would cost me $16. The $3 includes shipping. Since I order those just like I order firewood (meaning in due time) I do not care at all if shipping takes one week, five weeks or 10 weeks. Same for tires and so forth.

That is eating away American jobs.

That is outrageously expensive.

I doubt it. My impression is because they couldn't handle it and only want to deal with higher margin air shipping. Meaning a lot of stuff ... doesn't get shipped at all anymore. Instead, it is now being shipped from other countries, seee above.

Unless it was specialty steel (and even then sometimes) there are products we simply cannot produce in high-cost countries like the UK or the US anymore. But the issue is that cutting off the surface shipping option pulls the rug from underneath operations that can very well be run in high-cost countries. Such as companies selling electronic kits, low cost instruments, hobby supplies, pet medications, and so forth.

Huh? Tell me that isn't a non-sequitur. You are buy stuff from Asia because it is so cheap. The shipping is only part of the story and is because of the China post, not anything the USPS does. Even if USPS shipping were free we couldn't make and sell goods as cheap as Asia.

As has been said before, you clearly see a business opportunity. Either jump in and fill it or quit griping since you clearly don't understand the market.

Lol. Yes, $3 bike break pads are shipped from China because no one else can even afford to make and package them for $3 even if the shipping were free.

Sorry, low cost *anything* can't be produced competitively in a high labor cost country. In markets with high labor costs we have to either work in high margin areas, or do it without labor. That is exactly what some companies have done, eliminate the labor. Then we get to keep the business, but loose jobs. Of course that has been happening for many, many decades, but you don't seem to see that. You'd rather simplify everything and blame the last half a century of economic momentum on the USPS.

Sure we can. I have engineered such products almost all my EE life. Hint: Production automation. That's key.

Also, even if products are made in Asia as some of my designs are this still would allow for American blue collar jobs in the sales channels. But not if the fulfillment center has to be in Manila because of grossly unfavorable shipping rates in the US. And that's my point.

As I have said before, this has nothing to do with my opportunities as I have nothing to do with sales. It has to do with me being concerned about jobs in our country. Not my kind of job, as an EE I can always find work. But the blue collar guys can't and that's the problem.

Sure you can buy such items from US sources. But then it's $3 plus $4.99 shipping. Or plus $15 shipping if ordered from outside the country.

Agree, never said anything else. Except for highly automated processes where we still have a leg up. However, that is being eroded by miscellaneous costs such as shipping, taxes, "fees", onerous labor laws and such.

Example: A lot of people buy their _American_ pet medications from Asia. Guess why ...

USPS is part of the problem and a big one at that. Jobs also exist in the sales channels, often even more so than in production (because of automation). Domestic sales jobs are vanishing when people can order the same stuff from Asia for a lower net cost to them because shipping is peanuts or free.

On Mon, 26 Oct 2015 11:12:42 -0700, Joerg Gave us:

You can't be serious. I had engineer coworkers who had $4000 invested in their front forks alone. Bicycles can certainly be far higher quality than any car ever was. You must be buying yours at Walmart. Or K-Mart even.

Cheap Chinese hardware begets a cheap chinese mentality, but leaves you undereducated.