The Shipping News

The June 17th issue of the Economist had a special report on Logistics. Special Reports are most always interesting but make it even harder to finish an issue in a week. I'm about a month behind which is about par.

Logistics is the modern word for shipping and supply chain management fits in there too. This paragraph really surprised me:

The range of logistics businesses the express operators are moving into is huge. One service offered by UPS's local branches is a drop-off facility for broken Toshiba laptops. Most owners think that when they have told Toshiba about their problem and put their laptop into a UPS box, it is sent to the Japanese company to be repaired and then returned by UPS. But what really happens is that when the laptop arrives at UPS's Louisville hub, it is taken to a vast estate of warehouses near the airport and mended in a repair shop owned and run not by Toshiba but by UPS. The UPS technicians are trained by Toshiba and the warehouse holds Toshiba spare parts. Even the people in the Toshiba call-centre that deal with inquires work for UPS. The delivery company has been contracted to provide a complete repair and customer-service-operation. And having done this for one company, UPS could capitalise on its investment by proding a similar service for others.

Here's another crazy fact. The world's biggest distributor of fresh lobsters is in Lousiville, KY. And it's not just a headquarters, it's actually a hub that the lobsters are shipped to and then shipped out.