Forgive the laziness in not reading all the comments, as this may have been brought up before. I sent the link from the original dell story to a friend of mine that works there as a joke. He says that the product in the box is 3rd party and most likely is shipped from a 3rd party distributor like ingram micro or others.

Of course I don't know if the box had a dell return address on it.

perfektskyy

Also this isn't 1992. Landfills aren't the enemy. Sadly, this is 2008. When anything that can possibly be construed as maybe being bad for "the planet" is condemned for not being "green."

theespacepope

DakotaEpic

calstudios

@xint Your first comment is very accurate. We all have set routes (at the USPS anyways, I don't work for UPS, DHL, or whatever so I can't comment on their strategies though I imagine it's similar.) Box size has never been much of an issue for me, I've been able to load all my route's boxes with room to spare even during the Christmas rush.

There's a reason the routes are set up the way they are as well. The company tries to keep things as efficient as possible. You have to imagine, they have to pay for the gas the drivers use.

However your second comment confuses me a bit. I'm not sure if you're trying to be sarcastic or not...but how would having "SUV Vehicles" delivering the small packages and the larger versions delivering the larger packages on the same route be more efficient? Double vehicles = double fuel usage. Unless you're talking about special circumstances such as how we did things back when I worked for a apartment supply company: we shipped damn near anything you can think of apartments needed from hammers, to waste baskets, to appliances. The delivery guys all had set routes but we had two trucks reserved specifically for customers who ordered multiple appliances since they were so large and warranted a special delivery.

Templos

Rabid Penguin

I'm really bad with grammar,both on the Portuguese language and even worst on English.

Just saying. If you need a Marker. you go to to your local store an buy it. not on a store on-line, and wait 5 days to be delivered to your home. In the other hand you could take a 10 minutes walk of your home, to a 99 cents store/wal-mart/shop-rite. And buy the smae marker for about the same price as online and saving money on shipping.

Jeremias

@OMG! Ponies!: But but but?!?!? if I don't consume, how would I constantly complain about not having any money?

@Jeremias: Huh?

jackfrost132

1) "Yes. Who buys markers and Velcro on-line? Come on, that thing you buy at your local office supplier or market."

2) "AAAHHHH!!! Who would buy the makers of Velcro on-line? Think about it. You buy it at your local office supply store or Wal-Mart."

3) "Yup. Who's going to buy the markers and Velcro on-line? I came on them. You think you'll buy them at your local office supply store or market now?"

Rabid Penguin

yeap. who buys, two makers. an two velcros on-line.
came on that think you buy at you local office suplier or market..

Jeremias

I'm giving them trucks more to do now that because of box size reduction they make less trips... now I have the trucks available for other crap...

...so do the math.
One of my trucks can transport 200 boxes but because of size reduction it can now transport double the amount... oh... right.... lets all go home now... yeah because, you know... the shipping to the warehouse is done... you know because of the reduction in box size...

Get back in them trucks and move stuff yeh crazy MOFOS!! Thanks to box size reduction these trucks are available to do other things!

xint

I was pretty sure it would have been real hard to damage a blanket with no padding at all,

but what do i know?

corhou99

akreek

I'm sorry, but climate change is happening. If you think it isn't, then what's happening to the polar regions?

It might not be the fault of humans, but it is happening none the less.

VaccaFoeda

Rabid Penguin

"During the Civil War Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1861 which included a tax on personal incomes to help pay war expenses. The tax was repealed ten years later. However, in 1894 Congress enacted a flat rate Federal income tax, which was ruled unconstitutional the following year by the U.S. Supreme Court because it was a direct tax not apportioned according to the population of each state. The 16th amendment, ratified in 1913, removed this objection by allowing the Federal government to tax the income of individuals without regard to the population of each State."
[www.loc.gov]

For most of our nation's history, individual taxpayers rarely had any significant contact with Federal tax authorities as most of the Federal government's tax revenues were derived from excise taxes, tariffs, and customs duties.
[www.treas.gov]

It wasn't until 1913 that things started to radically change with the introduction of the 16th Amendment. Even then though, only the top 1% were affected by the income tax.

You must be under the impression that the government gets 100% of it's funds through taxing our income. That's 100% wrong.

The IRS and the Federal Reserve need to be abolished and we need to go back to the gold standard.

Our government got a long just fine without them before 1913, and we can get along just fine without them today. The only thing the income tax accomplishes is it forces us to be slaves to the state. Apparently you have no problem with being a slave though.

I also never said the Federal Government is not needed.. it is.. it's just overbloated and has strayed from the constitution and original intent.

The only reason our government needs this money is because of all the unneeded, wasteful, spending they do.

Rabid Penguin

@wjousts: it's funny you bring up magic pixie dust. ron paul runs on it i here. look where it's gotten him during the silly season.

Paradise

@wjousts: You're right. Void space between packages in a trailer is the enemy. It leaves jostle room for the pkgs to fall all over. Think how bricks are laid when a wall is built.

Also - your pkg is riding on hundreds of miles of conveyor belt, which means jams and belt burn (belt moving, but pkgs not) so that's another explanation for jacked up packages. But I did write up QUITE a few people in my day for "improper package handling".

Many times these 19-year-old shit-for-brains forget that it's not THEIR stuff they're handling and what's inside could potentially be worth more than they make in 5 months. Like tiny airplane parts.

shorty63136

wjousts

apeguero

wjousts

100 stops in one day is craaaazy. I would have never been able to even imagine that being possible.

The argument being that on the last step of a package being delivered the size of the box doesn't really matter. A driver has a route and that is what determines the stops he/she has to make. If I have small boxes or big boxes I still have to deliver what ever was assigned to me that day.

100 stops in one day
For example: 10 hour work day
That's 10 stops every hour.
...that route has got to be in a small area. I mean, there's no way that is possible.

I guess it's like you said, we just gotta go work for UPS or something similar to see how it is.

xint

Garrison Dean, Mr. Privilege

Imagine no one paying a federal income tax. Everyone gets to keep more of there money. That helps the every class a lot more than a flat tax.

"Stop taxing the bottom 5% and raise taxes on the top 60% to make up the difference..." What is this difference needed for? They shouldn't need to do this because there shouldn't be a federal income tax (among other taxes).

"As to the idea that tax cuts for the rich stimulate the economy - that is absolutely ridiculous."

You're looking at it all wrong. Who do you think employs poor people? Not other poor people. When they make money you make money, that's how it works. If you want to stimulate the economy give EVERYONE back their money and lower the tax burden on businesses.

People have this idea that if someone makes a lot of money you (and the government) have the right to it. And THAT'S ridiculous.

I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination... I'm a software developer.

Rabid Penguin

Also, I hope that after these Giz readers take the picture, they're calling the local elementary schools to see if there's a need for cardboard for the kids to use in projects. My son's Odyssey of the Mind team makes amazing things with cardboard -- we save up every large piece now for their creations.

Goodnightbabytron

Drivers are always on the move which is why they're always cranky. I've seen some make as many as 100 stops in a day.

Guys - seriously - go work at UPS for a year or so and befriend a driver or two so you can get insight on how this shit works. Because clearly most of you have no idea - and I can't fault you for that. It wasn't your job.

shorty63136

I don't think that it will make a difference in the size of the box.

YES, smaller boxes can probably make it possible to have space to carry a bit more during this first step of shipping.

I don't think that it will have a significant impact on the CO2 emissions.

And to say that these are "IRRESPONSIBLE SHIPPING PRACTICES RAPING THE ENVIRONENT" is waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much.

Adam probably didn't have anything creative to do for Earth Day and this is the best he could come up with.

xint

Of course, whether this happens enough to be a problem is a whole other issue.

Crim Law Geek

Same here. I live a few blocks from it. Bought a TV there and asked to pick it up because it'd save us both BUT they cannot make exceptions.

@soggy_cheerio: Ditto.

Kamdori

Imagine if everyone just paid 25% income tax, regardless of income. Sounds fair at first blush until you look at the reality of it. Under that system, someone making $1 million pays $250,000, leaving him/her with $750,000. However, someone making $20,000 is left with only $15,000. The bottom line is that that $5,000 means far more to the person making $20,000 than the $250,000 to the one making $1 million.

Second, there is the social reality that those at the top enjoy the protections and benefits of government far more than those at the bottom - in police and fire protection, in schools, in representation in Congress and in healthcare.

Finally, from a starkly pragmatic point of view, the wealthy are more able to employ the aid of experts who lower their tax exposure.

If that's not enough to convince you, perhaps you should also factor in the AMT and Social Security taxes. Income above $97,500 is exempt from Social Security taxation. Further, as the Congressional Budget Office noted regarding the AMT "Over the coming decade, a growing number of taxpayers will become liable for the AMT. In 2010, if nothing is changed, one in five taxpayers will have AMT liability and nearly every married taxpayer with income between $100,000 and $500,000 will owe the alternative tax. Rather than affecting only high-income taxpayers who would otherwise pay no tax, the AMT has extended its reach to many upper-middle-income households."

In an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times bemoaning the rebate checks, even the Heritage Foundation admitted that less that 5% of the tax revenue comes from the bottom 60%. The solution then becomes stop taxing the bottom 60% and raise taxes on the top percent to make up the difference.

While I am to a large extent an atheistic agnostic, I do believe in the concept of moral rightness. What social conservatives (think Ayn Rand) trump as "darwinism" is actually a perversion of the natural order of things. Look at social mammals and you will see an instinct, whereby the strong protect the weak.

As to the idea that tax cuts for the rich stimulate the economy - that is absolutely ridiculous. If a multimillionaire wants to buy something, s/he is going to buy it, regardless of whether s/he is going to get a tax cut. No tycoon has ever said "I wish I could buy that Bentley but unfortunately, what with tax time rolling around, it's just not in my budget."

The rich tend to be against class warfare because the are so outnumbered.

God made the pretty girls pretty because he likes them more

Only thing I didn't understand was... why is it that when you buy a memory card reader and a HC-SD card, they ship them seperately in boxes the same size as textbooks.

Megan Fox Iz Hot! ^-^ - ph15h

fezir

Just because you decrease the size of the box, doesn't mean you can reduce the number of trucks used to transport them, nor does it mean that you can transport it more efficiently; simply because, the overriding factor in shipping is time, not size. If the shipping company doesn't reveal a difference in shipping the slightly larger box, there's no reason to believe that shipping a smaller box is in anyway beneficial, either to the environment, or your pocketbook.

If you think otherwise, you've got rocks in your head. The business of shipping is to do it as efficiently as possible, as that maximizes their income. To that end, they've spent millions of dollars, researching and optimizing that process.

To argue that you know better is way off base, especially when it's obvious that you do not understand the problem.

This is why environmentalists piss me off. They think they understand every problem, but they often avoid the first law of thermodynamics.
    There is no such thing as a free lunch.

soggy_cheerio

gizGianca

I wish I could do pick ups at Newegg. Their City of Industry warehouse is so close to me.

ripfire

Also remember that some shipping companies have minimum size requirements...especially overseas. UPS would take a 4^3" box for domestic shipments, but the minimum was like 6^3" for overseas.

ry_ry

Identify your costs. These boxes exist because they are cost-efficient. Your desire to have companies keep inventories of multiple-sized boxes is not. It would require more warehousing and storage space and would increase the per box cost.

Now balance. You have an unknown benefit balanced against an unknown cost. You can't really talk about environmental impact unless you identify the actual impact.

Besides, if you want to talk about environmental damage, you should be complaining about 2nd and 3rd day shipping. Or Air shipping in general, which is notoriously bad on fuel.

In fact, you should probably be pushing for a move back to almost exclusively rail-based long distance shipping (with over the road freight only for local rail-to-destination shipping). Sure, it'll take a couple of weeks to get your order, but it's considerably more e-friendly.

And, I'd bet you dollars to donuts that slower shipping would have a much bigger impact than merely changing box sizes.

MMMMM, donuts . . ..

makanai

alpacalypse

Recycling papers and plastics is more wasteful and requires more energy than to make those same products "brand-new."

Aluminum is currently the only product where recycling is more efficient, and thus making the product useful to recycle.

Of course, if by "recycling" you mean "re-use", then sure... that's more efficient :c)

Rabid Penguin

The bad part is when you send it to a geek that takes pictures of his new stuff' unboxing and idiot thing like that.

Not to mention, you gotta recycle the box, big or small, SINCE NOW IT'S YOURS.

VakeroRokero

The size of my truck determines how many boxes I can transport.

Since our buddy Adam made a nice gallery here with example boxes, I will make the argument that in a (for example) UPS Delivery Truck I can fit hundreds of them boxes.

There's no waaaay I can make hundreds of deliveries in one day. Ofcourse that is all determined by my route and the time I have available in one day to make these deliveries.

If my deliveries are all 30 minutes apart, and I have a 10 hour work day, I can probably make about 20 deliveries in one day... 20 DELIVERIES!!!! That's not even half my truck!

So here is the real argument, apart from what our friend Adam has been proposing for the past few days.

Companies can certainly make a change in the delivery transport. The items shown in the gallery can certainly be delivered in smaller SUV type of vehicle. And bigger boxes can then be delivered in the big MOFO trucks. Smaller SUV Vehicles have less of the CO2 impact than the big trucks.

Companies have to determine the type of vehicle they will use to make the deliveries and reduce their impact on the environment.

The size of the boxes I have in my truck do not determine how many deliveries I make in one day... Unless I have huge boxes... but that is not the argument here. The pictures shown above, and being posted for these few days are small boxes.

If I'm a delivery guy, and Im delivering dish washers, stoves, driers, things like that... THEN, and only THEN the size of the boxes determine how many deliveries I make in one day.

My truck can only handle a specific weight and box sizes. So in one of them (for example) UPS trucks, i can probably fit, 3? 4? dish washers? driers? because of the weight and size. Maybe a few more? So, again, if my deliveries are 30 minutes apart, and I have a 10 hour work day. I empty out my truck before lunch!

I'd have to reload and head out again for afternoon deliveries. That is more of an impact on the environment. But only in that kind of situation does it become an issue.

xint

xAppleFan

Wouldn't you know that not only did our costs go down (and our waste output), but their costs went down as well?

It can be done - the problem is that most companies are just not interested in making the effort - or they want it to be all one-sided. Business-to-Business transactions are where this type of thing has to start - from there it will spread to the average consumer.

DigitalNoise

robmcbell

Scott

And to Monsterdog and his non-existent climate change, go drive your Silverado HD to the tattoo shop, and asked them to draw a dragon in your neck.

berbar

wjousts

wjousts

wjousts

butterscotch66

Samifumi

Earth Day is over. Let's all come back to reality.

packetsniffer

Monsterdog

Half off all shafts!

I've just never seen a UPS/Fedex truck that was full on delivery day before, even at Christmas. I just don't think it's that big of an issue to be honest.

VaccaFoeda

We won't know how pervasive a practice it is to ship tiny items in ginormous boxes unless people ask the question and raise concerns. I think this entire discussion is valid and should continue to be investigated... I suspect it is a problem of some significance; it's obviously not the worst problem out there, but seems like one that could be categorized as a "low-hanging fruit" (aka easily solved perhaps?).

berribrand

You're shipping 9,999 items. You've got three sizes; small, medium and large, all in equal quantities.

Your options for packaging are this: buy 3 different sized boxes (3,333 small, 3,333 medium, 3,333 large), buy 2 different sized boxes (6,666 medium, 3,333 large), or buy 1 size (9,999 large). Based on the quantities ordered, your best bet is to just buy the one sized box. You'll get a good price break, and you'll be able to control the inventory of that one box easier than you will 2 or 3 boxes.

I'm sure the big online retailers have some sort of shipping agreement with whoever they use, stating that they'll get a certain freight rate based on the general size of their boxes used.

crushthemall

shorty63136

The same goes for internet retailers. More efficient packaging not only saves them money from the materials (box, styrofoam, tape, etc) used to pack, but also the amount the carriers charge them to ship. They allocate massive resources to supply chain management for reasons like this. Can they become more efficient? Yes, and its likely this post will have nothing to do with any efficiency gains.

As with everything, going green should start with your own practices. If you were going to shop at the mall, it would be dumb to make one trip for a flash drive, make a second trip for an MP3 player, make another trip for an HDMI cable, make another trip for a digital camera, make another trip for a video game, etc. You would be much more green getting all of that in one trip. Same thing applies to ordering online. If you place an order for a number of items (and check the combine into as few shipments as possible), you will be doing the environment a favor.

Mokers

jrizzah

jrizzah

Yea, it matters. It's not just the material waste of the cardboard. It's the shipping and storing process. If boxes are 100 times bigger than they need to be, UPS, Fedex, they all have to make 100 times the truck runs. Which means they waste 100 times more gas, and charge us 100 times more shipping fees.

dothedrewtoo

tellahoohooo

detach

Kamdori

RoCKSTaH53

Maybe we should petition UPS and FedEx and DHL to start charging based on size... then you'll see a change.

RoCKSTaH53

Most of the time those people at the top had to start at the bottom too.

Rabid Penguin

VaccaFoeda

The few inches that will be gained by using smaller boxes will do absolutely NOTHING to the shipping route of the delivery trucks.

Trucks get a certain amount of deliveries everyday and that's what they serve.

SMALLER BOXES IN NO WAY WILL CHANGE THE DELIVERY ROUTES OF THESE TRUCKS.

They will make the same amount of trips whether they are delivering small boxes or big ones. They still have to make the same amount of trips.

So if you want to criticize something, it shouldn't be the size of the boxes, it should be the delivery strategy these companies have. The route is what determines how many trips these trucks have to make, and the distance.

Again... one more time...
The size of the boxes, in no way, determine the trips these trucks have to make.

xint

Not sure how Amazon does it, but I'm sure they are on the cutting edge that will be followed by many other retailers.

JAG42

I don't think there should be a federal tax either, mind you.

GOKOR

xAppleFan

i was picking a package up from UPS one day and witnessed the driver using a box on the truck to stand on to sock other boxes on top rack.
then watched him put it up right next to it.

cny

riqgeez

I am only 16 but sometimes you have to think "outside the box" when it comes to real issues.

I have ordered many things in my day and have never seen a box that takes up more than double the space than the product. Even with my ipod I had received it in a padded mailer after repair.

areyoubeefin

Why should the rich have to pay a higher percentage of tax than you? Because they're successful and work hard they should punished for it?

"give tax breaks to the rich so that they can buy things that they could already afford"

That's a silly comment. So what if you can only afford one car and they can afford five. That doesn't give anyone the right to take that money from them. We're not communists.

Of course, I'm of the opinion there should be no Federal income tax.

But I digress... Large, inappropriately sized boxes, is the issue at hand.

Rabid Penguin

It's not like this crowd has a lot of room to talk. See this post.

soggy_cheerio

BasicBlack

Buran

I'm sure my 23 mile round trip walk to the store for a sharpie would be energizing, but imagine the horror upon returning realizing I forgot something and needed to go back.

$4 to have a sharpie shipped to me is less than it would cost in gas to go get my own.

Say hi to all of the rats and cockroaches in your urban living for me.

gamehendge2000

Kaiser-Machead's Chips Ahoy!

[img395.imageshack.us]
...here we go again.

xint

Kamdori

tellahoohooo

WD40

Rabid Penguin

Josh_Geyer

I could go on and on...but I shant.

shorty63136

-mainly because I am receiving my RAM that i bought the other day from frys =P

extremer

At one point we had 4x4x4s, but then that stopped. :(

shorty63136

At the end of the day, half the things are coming from China - which has done an excellent job of destroying the Yangtze River - and will wind up in a landfill in India, or Vietnam, or the Phillipines, or Indonesia, or some other developing nation, destined to destroy their water table.

Here's some things I'd like to know: How many unsold issues of Time's Earth Day issue are going to end up in landfills? How many extra pages were used for ads to buy things?

I'm going to end my little rant here. It just irks me because it's thinking like "consume your way to conservation" - along with its idiot cousins "spend your way out of a recession" and "give tax breaks to the rich so that they can buy things that they could already afford" - that spike my outrage.

God made the pretty girls pretty because he likes them more

Angus

Please use extra tape so they don't have to be opened. :)

shorty63136

GOKOR

sergio_e

I worked at UPS in a specialized department where I could open anything (one of a handful of people - don't be alarmed) and packaging and re-packaging was a big part of my job. If these companies don't meet a certain box strength requirement (crush test, single/double/triple-walled, etc.) when packaging their merchandise, regardless to how small the merchandise is, and it gets damaged, they will not get paid for a damage claim b/c it was improperly packaged and thus their fault.

So - in many instances, it makes sense to use a slightly (yes, slightly, not ginormous) larger box and stuff it with craft paper/peanuts/foam/bubble wrap/air bags than to use a box or package that doesn't meet requirements and risk the customer's item being damaged or delayed due to damage and having to straighten out a replacement.

I do have to say though, that when it comes to book packaging, Amazon has everybody beat w/ their zip-tear packaging. It's usually double-walled and very tough.

shorty63136

There just really aren't any boxes made for packages like that. Maybe USPS priority boxes, but not many generic ones. Try going to any site that sells boxes, and usually the smallest you can find is 6x6x6 which is still a bit big for even stuff shown on here. I'm sure over at those places, the superiors in charge just stressed getting the damn things out instead of size. At first I had my employees just cut their own smaller boxes but I was chewed out for that.

Put it this way, if you hadn't received your order, and you called and asked, you would probably laugh your ass off if they said "We're waiting on getting more smaller boxes" . That being said, I think you'd rather have it sent in an oversized box than have to wait the extra few days.

Not to say the companies are not at fault. Some of this could very well have been caused by shippers just doing a half ass job.

Kamdori

Rain-man

That not withstanding, I would offer that doing most of your shopping online instead of driving to the store possibly/probably constitutes less of a carbon footprint that all that cardboard and plastic air pillow cushioning.

Now if only all towns would accept all of those plastic products instead of merely the usual bottles and cans.. i.e. plastic wrappings, blister packaging, styrofoam, and other plastic shipping products.

meesterbrian

But that doesn't really matter, since this still happens. We got a box of tea among the many things we stock the office kitchen with, and it ALWAYS comes in this box that's like 4-5 times larger than the actual packaging.

Kaiser-Machead's Chips Ahoy!

Darrone

Adam Frucci

Marty_MacFly

God made the pretty girls pretty because he likes them more