
Million dollar gas hack. - humanlever
http://greenwala.com/?p=83
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anthonyrubin
I wonder how much fuel could be saved by avoiding unnecessary residential
deliveries. How many delivery attempt notices does UPS leave every day?

If shippers provided UPS with an email address for the recipient a notice
could be sent by email the day before a package is to be delivered. This
notice could provide options to let UPS know to wait a day or two to attempt
delivery when someone will be there or redirect the package to a commercial
address (e.g. the recipient's place of employment).

I recently had a package delivered that required a signature. After the first
attempt I called UPS and had it redirected to my work address. Unfortunately
they already had it on the truck so I was told they would attempt delivery to
my home address the next day before redirecting it.

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silencio
I was waiting on the front lawn for a UPS delivery to show up while surfing on
my laptop one day since it was a nice day. I occasionally took a look at the
online tracking page and flipped out when it went from "out for delivery" to a
failed delivery notice because the recipient wasn't there. Since I saw no UPS
truck driving past my house, and the front door is the only way to make a
delivery short of climbing over walls of other houses, you can probably
understand why. Called up UPS customer support, asked them to please redeliver
the next day because I would be leaving home soon and I didn't want to wait
for the delivery, wherever the guy was, so he could save himself some time and
effort.

The UPS delivery guy actually came over 4 hours later when I was definitely
away from home to put up a delivery attempt notice saying I wasn't there.
After I explicitly told two separate customer support folks NOT to deliver the
package after I talked to them because I will not be there to pick up - and
those two were separate from the initial call I made. This guy seemed to have
an absurd sense of humor, because he marked the one and only notice I received
that I didn't want as a second delivery attempt.

Your idea will only make sense if UPS actually did their job. They failed
catastrophically for me in that incident. Since I seem to get delivery attempt
notices quite often, I wonder just how many times they actually stopped by
(unfortunately I usually take the car out when I'm going, and that's a
different exit..).

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dandelany
Presumably, the most efficient delivery path to take must include left
turns... right? I wonder if the efficiency gained by only turning right is
greater than the efficiency lost by taking a less efficient route?

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jacobbijani
What makes you think it's less efficient? They are driving all around the
city. The system organizes the deliveries into an efficient route that favors
right turns.

I'm sure the system is smart enough to not have them go all the way around the
block to backtrack. It just has them hit that location before advancing. I
would love to see an illustration of the type of route it outputs.

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dandelany
> The system organizes the deliveries into an efficient route that favors
> right turns.

Yes, I just wonder how much less efficient "the most efficient route with only
right turns" is than the true optimal route. Based on my limited experience
with optimal TSP problems, I bet they're fairly close.

I'm imagining a route which gives each driver a chunk of several blocks, then
has them hit all locations within the chunk with a right-hand spiral
inwards... But I'd love to see the actual routes.

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hugh
According to the article, the system doesn't really plot an only-right-turns
route, it's more like an 80%-right-turns route. But the fact that the software
knows enough to know that left turns are worth avoiding is a pretty good piece
of work.

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patrickg-zill
I dunno, I did this (right hand turns whenever possible) like 20 years ago in
my first job, when I had to drive around Toronto. So I doubt I am the only one
who thought of this before ...

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easyfrag
No doubt, I've been doing it too for a while (although my reasons are safety-
based). But not everyone has access to a modeling tool (and the data) to
create a business case that convinces a big multinational to make it into
corporate policy.

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gojomo
Unmentioned but also significant: avoiding left turns means fewer accidents.

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silencio
UPS trucks in particular would be in a position (at least in the United
States, where we drive on the right side of the road) to make less lane
changes since stopping for a delivery usually means stopping on the right side
of the road. Possibly safer as a result of that as well.

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rms
>You see it seems that some analyst at UPS got some modeling software and came
up with this plan.

This was a little beyond "some analyst"... even if it was originally the idea
of one person, the actual plan took many, many people to implement. Solving
real versions of the traveling salesman problem takes a lot of manpower. UPS
hires more Industrial Engineers than anyone else.

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goodkarma
I'm curious how they optimized for this. Perhaps some sort of linear
programming or variation of the "traveling salesman" problem?

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rms
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research>

This is one of the things that Industrial Engineers actually do. In my opinion
the pay is much too low for how hard the math is. Lots of linear/dynamic
programming + statistics and all sorts of fun algorithms.

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goodkarma
I know, I have a degree in it. :)

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samwise
without putting too much thought into it. i would assume that the most common
route looks like a inward decaying clockwise spiral.

