
When a Bike Company Put a TV on Its Box, Shipping Damages Went Down (2017) - edward
https://www.bicycling.com/news/a20027122/vanmoof-tv-on-box-damaged-bikes/
======
justinhensley
I've always been curious about the shipping process. I have met or know 7
people who work/worked at the shipping hub in my city. I always ask them how
the packages are handled. Every one of them said that they (and all of their
coworkers) handle all packages on a scale ranging from rough to purposefully
damaging. One guy told me how he targets boxes marked Fragile for extra abuse
when he's exhausted/angry/having a bad day.

I predict that a package being treated delicately throughout the entirety of
it's route would be the outlier. Every package is at some point flung across a
room/truck. The only question is if it is going to hit another box or a much
harder surface.

this is all anecdotal, but seems to fit with the stat that roughly 10% of all
packages in the United States are damaged during shipping.[0]

[0]: [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/adriana-dunn/one-
in-10-ecomme...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/adriana-dunn/one-
in-10-ecommerce-packa_b_4371992.html) \-- couldn't find a direct link to the
case study.

~~~
jen729w
You know these people, so do you have any insight as to _why_ they did this?

Is it envy? “Screw this guy getting his fancy TV that I don’t have.” If not,
what?

It seems needlessly cruel. I assume these are good people?

~~~
chrsstrm
I've worked on multiple shipping and loading docks. If you haven't had this
type of work experience it would be difficult to understand that the entire
line is one big connected system. If just one person stalls their part of the
process, the other pieces both upstream and downstream are affected. And
believe me, everyone on the line instantly knows who is falling behind and
you'll begin to feel the eyes on you immediately. If the issue is not resolved
quickly, the entire line might need to stop, which is rule #1 that you don't
ever do. Sometimes you just get behind and realizing you need to catch up
quickly, 0 fucks are given. If you're stacking and shipping a pallet every
couple minutes then you're not going to care about a single case or two being
damaged. Is the box torn open because you threw it? Fine, turn it around on
the pallet so no one can see the tear - problem solved. Is the supervisor
riding you for being too slow? Fine, I'll show them who's slow, because it
isn't me - look how fast I can do my job (without caring about what gets
broken). Your job isn't to care what happens to these thousands of mystery
boxes you're handling each day, it's just to get them out the damn door on
time.

The mood issue is real as well and it's less about personal feelings in
general and more driven by how you're being treated at work. Any shift in the
normal routine can set the mood of the entire warehouse and in return lead
people into not caring. It could be announced mandatory overtime or even
something as simple as removing something from the break room. Retaliatory
action isn't seen as an inconvenience against the customer, it's a middle
finger to corporate. You treat us like shit and we're going to make you feel
it too, proxied through customer complaints about broken or missing items.
Some individuals do go off the rails and it's usually related to some sort of
perceived slight against them by the company. A lot of these could have been
squashed if the manager didn't throw up their arms and say there was nothing
they could do about it; take it up with HR. Most of the time if someone in
corporate had just listened to the issue and let the employee get it off their
chest, that would have been enough to calm the anger. What many white collar
employees in the front office don't realize is how seriously some small and
inconsequential issues can matter to blue collar laborers. This could go on
and on about blue vs. white collar relations and management practices, but the
point is that it's not about the customer so much as it is about internal
politics and maintaining the status quo.

~~~
cortesoft
That all makes sense, but it doesn't explain why shipping workers would be
EXTRA careless with items marked fragile. I would expect equal carelessness
with all packages.

~~~
ElKrist
I believe it does: "Retaliatory action isn't seen as an inconvenience against
the customer, it's a middle finger to corporate. You treat us like shit and
we're going to make you feel it too, proxied through customer complaints about
broken or missing items"

As a customer, if my box arrives smashed I am angry. If my box arrives smashed
with a "Fragile" sign printed on it, I feel insulted. I guess in the second
case the complaint is going to be worse and the reputation of the shipping
company damaged even more ("They can't even deliver a 'fragile' parcel
properly")

------
whatshisface
I've often wondered about what you would discover if you were to send
accelerometers through various channels, over various distances, and inside of
various packages. A database of carrier/packaging/haul distance/acceleration
history tuples would be a valuable B2B product for many manufacturers.

~~~
mrsuprawsm
This sort of thing already exists, albeit in a low-tech method, using ball
bearings or coloured gels. For example: [https://spotsee.io/wp-
content/uploads/2018/06/tiltwatch-plus...](https://spotsee.io/wp-
content/uploads/2018/06/tiltwatch-plus-2.png)

~~~
mcv
Clever, although with an accelerometer you may also keep track of which
stretch of the journey they get handled the roughest.

------
xorgar831
Boeing does this with their seats in the factory too, they put a picture of a
Lamborghini on the seats since they cost the same.

EDIT: Yes, it's hard to believe a seat costs the same as a Lamborghini, that's
exactly why they put the picture on it. This is mainly for the first class
seats, though rows apparently cost about the same too.

~~~
switch007
Only certain high-end business/first seats I assume? I can't believe a
standard economy seat costs $200,000+

~~~
grawprog
[https://247wallst.com/aerospace-defense/2014/06/03/why-a-
boe...](https://247wallst.com/aerospace-defense/2014/06/03/why-a-
boeing-747-8-costs-357-million/)

For some perspective a Boeing 747 costs $357,000,000 they have a seating
capacity of 416.

416 x $200,000 is only $83,200,000 so...honestly...I could see it.

~~~
jonknee
It's hard to say how much anything actually costs in aviation because _no one_
pays list price and are outfitted per the buyers' specs (why airlines all have
their own in cabin look). Discounts are usually north of 50% off "list".
Economy style seats don't have a lot going on and definitely don't cost the
same as a Lambo.

You can even buy your own if you want to be uncomfortable in your own home:

[http://usedairlineseats.com/product/set-of-coach-class-
tripl...](http://usedairlineseats.com/product/set-of-coach-class-triple-seats-
used-airline-seats/)

~~~
inferiorhuman
> Economy style seats don't have a lot going on

Actually they do. The drive to make thinner and lighter seats means lots of
exotic materials can go into them. If the seats include in-flight
entertainment devices, that'll increase the cost too. Plus the seats still
have to be certified to the same stringent safety standards as the first-class
seats.

Of course the claim was that a row of economy seats costs about what one
first-class seat does. I think that's believable.

------
JohnTHaller
I've given up being able to receive certain items via mail where I live in
NYC. Amazon only ships via UPS. They smashed two $300 humidifiers in a row by
bouncing them around on their sides despite the box clearly labeled to only
move while upright. I'm still waiting to get a refund on one of them weeks
later. They managed to break both tripods I ordered as well. I kept the second
as gluing the broken bit is easier than dealing with yet another return.

------
The_suffocated
The effect of this trick will diminish quickly when everyone copies it. I
wonder why this bike company was eager to reveal their trick if it was so
effective. Perhaps the free advertisements they gets from news reports are
more worthwhile?

~~~
MRD85
Once this trick becomes widely know then TV manufacturers will see a spike in
damaged goods after they've benefited for so long.

~~~
gumby
Not to mention all the TVs damaged by disappointed bike thieves.

------
scotty79
This reminds me of a company "Atheist Shoes". That had to put just "Shoes" on
their boxes because it greatly reduced delivery problems in US (no effect in
europe).

------
TheKarateKid
I still don't understand why there has never been a push to hold carriers
responsible for the goods they damage. Could you imagine dropping your car off
to be repaired at your dealer/mechanic and being held responsible for anything
_they_ broke?

Manufacturers and retailers should push to hold UPS/FedEx/etc. responsible if
damages are above a certain metric. (If they do already, it's clearly not good
enough.) The 20% damage rate for this bike company is insane.

------
magnetic
I wonder if another dimension got negatively affected, such as theft (porch
pirates or the like).

~~~
harshulpandav
TV thieves will be disappointed, but may become fit.

------
ryandvm
The king snake called, it wants its strategy back.

This is a clever trick, but like the king snake's mimicry of the venomous
coral snake, the long term result will surely be reduced efficacy of the
markings on the bonafide item.

------
avip
prev
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12572465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12572465)

~~~
starpilot
Almost exactly the same threads too, including mentioning of Boeing aircraft
seats.

------
ggm
Our hard drives for mainframes used to come with glass tube force exceeded
indicators and ,'tipped in transit' markers. Five cent gizmos which meant you
could refuse to accept or RMA.

~~~
Havoc
Kinda ironic considering how much force a HDD at rest can sustain...let alone
tipping.

~~~
jon-wood
Hard disks these days are much tougher than the ones used for old school
mainframes, or for that matter just old school hard disks. Back in the day
there was a command to park the drive heads so they wouldn’t bounce around
during transit.

------
tracker1
-1 to bycicling.com for not linking to the vendor's website. It always bugs me when the best things about the web over print isn't used appropriately...

[https://www.vanmoof.com/en_us/](https://www.vanmoof.com/en_us/)

------
basicplus2
"Someone" put this up on HN 2 years ago....

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12572465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12572465)

------
chisleu
We had 7 42" 4k monitors delivered and all 7 were damaged. I'm glad we were on
the end of the bell curve. :D

~~~
kowdermeister
Seven times? I would get mad as hell after the third one and go fetch it
myself.

~~~
chisleu
No, the 7 were delivered together.

------
flurdy
Or label the box "Live Crickets"?

[1]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/12/29/i-ordered...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/12/29/i-ordered-
box-crickets-internet-it-went-about-well-youd-expect/)

------
citizenpaul
I had a large electrics/computer supplier tell me they would no longer sell my
company TV's due to the fact that so many that were shipped in the southeast
US arrived damaged and had to be returned. This is one of those think outside
the box things that don't scale.

------
spongeb00b
In the early days of Apple when they first started shipping computers to Japan
they were getting transported in refrigerated trucks. The transport company
saw the logo and just assumed it was fruit.

I’ve lost the source for this, I believe it was in the book “Apple
Confidential 2.0”

------
punnerud
Why not including an Arduino-logger with accelerometer, tilt-sensor and
clock/timestamp. This way you could figure out where in the transport the
rough handling is happening.

------
Causality1
Well, duh. If I have a finite amount of time I'm going to treat an electronic
glass sandwich with more care than a box with a steel frame in it.

------
dangerboysteve
Another way to interpret this is, the bike company cheaped out on proper
packaging for the bikes in the first place.

------
mc32
It makes sense for them to do this, from a selfish perspective, but this is an
iconic example of why we can’t have good things. If more shippers do this,
handlers will just ignore the caution signs.

~~~
paradoja
Handlers are already ignoring the caution signs, though, just not for (at
least) one product, TVs.

------
burtonator
Psychologist have found that people will cheat least in controlled tests when
someone is watching. Even if the person can't audit them.

EVEN if no one is watching and it's just a picture of an eye.

------
dba7dba
I've heard only item not tossed/thrown around at FedEx/UPS/etc is any box
labeled as hazardous material.

Every other boxes are treated equally, tossed/thrown.

------
ksec
I wonder what are the % of damage from Online Shopping. Online Retailing is
basically moving the cost of High Rentals to shipping / delivery.

------
lichenwarp
I ORDERED A DAMN BIKE, NOT A TV! oh...

------
leeoniya
high quality, expensive bikes are usually designed to withstand a good amount
of physical abuse and dynamic loads under a 90kg rider. i wonder what kind of
damage they sustained. bent spokes? brake/shift levers?

~~~
undersuit
My last bike came damaged. The box with the steel frame suffered a minor hit I
didn't even notice it until after my shop reported the damage. Bent the right
rear dropout less than two millimeters, dropouts are where the wheel axle
connects to the frame. This prevented the rear tire from inserting and had
bent the location of the rear derailleur mount.

Repairing wouldn't necessarily be safe and would definitely invalidate the
warranty, luckily the company I bought it from sent me a new frame after I
gave them proof of shipping damage.

~~~
Sir_Substance
This kind of thing weirds me out to be honest. I've had this kind of
conversation with serious cyclists before where I've been told that it's
impossible for cyclists to ride on the footpath in places because the uneven
cement slabs would damage {some part of the bike I don't remember or care}.
You're here telling me that a 2mm twist in part of the frame is a serious
problem for attaching the rear wheel, and that it would be "unsafe" to have a
skilled technician fix it (presumably by just twisting it back?).

What kind of piss-poor engineering is going into high end bikes? $400 bikes
don't have this problem. I've legit thrown (albeit cautiously to make sure it
doesn't bounce) my bike over a 1m drop on it's side several times and it's
fine other than the kickstand being a little bent.

I'd never spend $1500+ on a bike that can't handle a 2mm deviation in the rear
fork. Over the lifespan of the bike it's /definitely/ gonna have some part of
it deviated by 2mm through normal wear and tear, so if that's gonna break it
beyond safe repair then that's a pretty useless bike. Am I the crazy one here?

~~~
gomox
It's quite hard to damage a dropout with the wheels mounted if not by way of a
major crash.

But the rear triangle of a bike remains pretty weak in shipping as the rear
axle is not in place.

~~~
Sir_Substance
Isn't that something that could be solved by shipping it with a 50c piece of
metal between the bars during shipping as a surrogate for the wheel axle?
Given the list prices, seems like they could stretch to that, and it'd be more
reliable than hoping the delivery man will be more gentle because he thinks
it's a TV box.

~~~
leeoniya
yeah, with proper supports in the right places, none of these
shenanigans/hacks would be needed.

~~~
undersuit
It came with some cheap plastic covers on the dropouts, nothing structural.
That's a good thing to look for in future purchases though.

------
trumped
On my boxes, I put biological hazard symbols...

------
qu4ku
when all bike companies put a tv on their boxes, shipping damages of tv's went
up.

------
bentearwalking
Going back up after this article

------
warp_factor
That's truly thinking "out of the box"

------
m3kw9
Now TV damages is gonna start going up once they find out

------
chaddattilio
Did they control for the 100 other reasons why this might have happened?

------
iambateman
If a bicycle in a box can be damaged in transit, one wonders about the quality
of its construction.

~~~
bitexploder
Carbon fiber bikes can absorb a lot force through the frame from riding
forces, but you can bang it moderately on a tree and it just breaks. That is
just something cyclists accept for the lighter weight.

