Bob et all:
You seem real preoccupied with the thought, the USPS lost your pump. Did they Bob? Did They? (-: My money is on the FABO members fowl-up from the get-go!
The sender/packer is the biggest problem in the chain. (Common sense is not so Common!!) You would be surprised how many people grab a brake caliper, wrap a sheet of bubble wrap around it, and drop it into one of the wife's shoe box, then they look for some tape, O, the scotch tape from the kids school project, perfect! They pull off four or maybe as many as six two or three inch long pieces slap them on, Bam, done! O, And, Yes, I have seen boxes pasted shut. This is not a auto part only problem, because it use to sadden me almost every day seeing cookies, can goods, books, toiletries, personal letters, photos & the list goes on all intended for a service man on duty in some god forsaken hole. What follows all the loose items? Some busted up, empty, thin cardboard box with some sort of useless cheep tape. Will it ever get to him? Probably-Not! But, you would be flabbergasted as to the amount of items that sharp employees grab out of the mail stream and reunite with a box & address repackage it and send it on. The USPS spends a huge amount of money every year trying to get items to their intended recipient. Is it the USPSs fault? I think not! But everyone blames them anyway. Also you would be surprised as to how many sellers pack a box full of junk, ship it as new items, insure the hell out of it, knowing it wont make it and collect on the insurance. We have Postal Inspectors working full time chasing them down.
OK, if your shipping anything, use this as a scale! Wrap your package as if your going to hold it over your head and drop it to a concrete floor, probably more than one time, and have maybe a heaver box dropped on it. Come on people, you don't think the clerk takes your package and hand carries it to a driver in the back, that in turn hand carries it to the main processing center, then he places it on a table waiting for the next person to hand carry it and individually pack each item into the container headed to it's intended location........NOT! It is called Automation! Every credible shipper in the modern world uses it to streamline and expedite mail flow. Your package got loaded/ probably tossed into a six foot tall piece of rolling stock & went to a local Bulk Mail Center where it is loaded into boxes using the first three of your zip. Now these boxes are the size of a standard shipping pallet and about eight feet tall. So, to get them loaded the sorting machine runs at about ten feet off the ground and shoves packages into the appropriate box. If your box fell the whole ten feet it will likely have eight more feet of other heavy stuff fall on top of it. When full they get loaded into a truck and driven to its location, unloaded by being dumped into a pit with a conveyer at the bottom and is then sorted to the next two of your zip and again dropped into a six foot tall container heading to your PO. From then on its back in human hands.
Bottom line, use as heavy of a box as you can, use as much packing material as you can, use Quality packing tape liberally & by all means tape your shipping label completely covered with clear tape to your box. We all get those return address labels in the mail from groups that in turn want you to donate money to them. Just stick one of them in a secure location on your item your shipping before you pack it, you will get it back if something does happen in shipping. I guarantee we do not want your items because in the end they all get scrapped. Another thing to keep in perspective is the USPS delivers more packages in one day than Fed-X does in one year, and in three days more than UPS does in one year. I remember I was on a joint USPS/Fed-X project and the fed-x guys were all bragging about just sorting four million pieces through their Memphis, TN. Hub. OK, SO, when I was in mail possessing, we did at least that and more on just eight of the forty machines every night.
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