Shipping logistics is amazing

Today I had to send a warrantied laptop in for depot repair. I called the 800 support number yesterday afternoon and before 10 a.m. this morning an empty box had arrived from Memphis, Tennessee. At 16:12 this afternoon I took it to a UPS store. An hour and a half later it left the store and at 19:22 it had left the airport. Right now as I am writing this the laptop is probably up in the air somewhere over the middle of the US. I know that by tomorrow morning it will have arrived at its destination back in Memphis.

This only happened because the laptop I had purchased via eBay happened to still have a warranty. In fact it had an on-site warranty and they were ready to send someone to my place to repair it. But that just seemed almost greedy to me to do that – its not like I can’t live without this laptop for a little while longer – so instead I opted for the depot repair option, which uses overnight shipping to transport first the empty box to the customer, then the laptop back to the repair depot.

I even feel guilty about the overnight shipping, but this is basically something I will probably never do except for an occasion like this so I’m having fun just observing this whole process happening.

Tonight I was watching a cool documentary about the logistics of shipping and its pretty amazing. This video tracks a pie bought at a local store in Virginia on its way to Hawaii during the peak Christmas season. I love documentaries about this. I bet there are a thousand things right here around me in my city which, if we were to investigate them, would be fascinating.

Update: Its now 00:36 here and I see that the laptop arrived over 2,000 miles away in Louisville, KY just over an hour ago.

Based on a rough calculation I just did the average speed of the laptop since I shipped it at 16:12 is over 300 mph. Its as if I had placed the laptop on a conveyer belt moving at 300 mph, and this conveyer belt constantly runs between I would guess almost all locations worldwide.

Here’s a documentary about the UPS “Worldport” where my laptop landed. This video is even more intriguing than the first one. One interesting thing to note about 11 minutes in is the aircraft tracking system ADSB. UPS has been using this system since at least 2008 when the documentary was made, and it makes me question why other airlines – most notably Malaysia Airlines – did not implement something like it.

…eine unglaubliche erfolgreich Operation mit unheimliche grossen moeglichkeiten fuer die Zukunft: