I do not recall a time in my life where we’ve depended so much on the abilities of third-party shippers to get products the last mile. The last mile is industry jargon for store-to-consumer. Most of my life this was a matter of going to the store and picking up the items I wanted in person. In this “order it online” world we live in, there is an incredible amount of shopping done from our computers and especially our mobile phones. The world of commerce has always rolled on commercial shippers’ wheels, but not like it’s rolling today.
Just ten years ago it was kinda odd to see a parcel delivery truck out in my neck of the woods. Today, it’s odd that a day passes where I don’t see one, including Sundays. This brings me to the point of this missive; not only is it “that time of the year” again, the shippers we rely on are BUSY. Therefore, I thought it pertinent to peck out a few words of advice for shopping from this point forward.
Pay Attention To Deadlines!
Most stuff you can do at your leisure. Want to go fishing? Get your license and you can pretty much go fishing any time you want to. What about a vacation? As long as you’ve got the dough to go and some time to spare take off! However, Christmas has a hard deadline. It’s going to be the 25th of December no matter what. In the traditional shopping model, one could wait up until the evening hours of the 24th before shopping provided you wanted to wade through the throngs of other last-minute shoppers at whatever retail venue you chose.
But in today’s click-boom-buy world, that click had best happen with a sufficient time cushion or it will not arrive in time for the big day. In other words, you can still be fighting the unwashed masses at a retail space if you don’t get your stuff together and order with plenty of time to spare.
Most shippers have standard ship times based on level of service and geography. With standard ground shipping, there is a good deal of territory that will receive a package from Umarex USA in two business days. To describe this area would be easiest to say the southern tier of states and as far west and north as the Kansas/Colorado border. The Rocky Mountain region, the southern end of Florida, upper Midwest, and the North-East show to be in the three business day range. Our map shows most of California, the Pacific Northwest, and Idaho/Montana region to be in the four-business-day shipping territory. If you are in Alaska or Hawaii, expect another day or two tacked on.
Allow For Murphy’s Law!
Now, these estimates are for ideal conditions. Ideal conditions can disappear in a moment. A winter storm can shut down an essential interstate corridor, a distribution facility can have an “event” that locks the place down for a day or a few days. Then there is the possibility that the shipping infrastructure is overwhelmed. There’s only so much room on a truck and so many trucks on the road and so many truckers able to drive. It is certainly possible that one of these events or a combination of all of them could keep important deliveries from being made on time.
Christmas falls on a Saturday this year. Depending on where you are, a good piece of advice is for you to allow for at least 2 business days (Monday through Friday) more than the estimated shipping scheduled for your region. In other words, even if you are in the two-day region from us, shop as though you are in the 4-day window. The absolute last day to safely order for this hypothetical situation is Sunday-- yes that order is manually printed out and sent to the warehouse and there's a chance a late order will not be picked that same day.
Our warehouse team works very hard this time of year to be very conscientious of shipping times. But they cannot work miracles. Be sure, no matter where you are shopping online, to allow for Murphy’s Law to show up. If 2020 and 2021 has taught us anything, it is to expect the unexpected.