Complete Shipping Failure

FIRST General Forum
#1

We got our robot back from the Philadelphia Alliance Regional today. We didn’t get the crate back.

The robot’s currently sitting outside of the robotics lab, strapped to it’s pallet. The other 5 sides of our crate are completely gone, and the robot is covered in clear shrink wrap we didn’t put there. Our red light dome has been shattered, a side panel has been ripped off and put back on top of the robot. Who knows what other damage is lurking under the shrink wrap.

I’m a little ticked off. Has anything like this ever happened to anyone else, and how was the situation resolved??

#2

That really sucks, I don’t know what else to say.

I would suggest contacting FIRST and FedEx and talking to them, because obviously this shouldn’t happen.

#3

Oh my… I don’t know what to say. How could that happen? I hope nothing too terrible happened to your robot.

#4

Oh my Gui, that’s awful! Report this directly to the shipping company and FIRST. Talk to who delivered this crate and then keep going up the latter untill you get to Philly. If you need any help, remeber Tucker is here. Just talk to Clarke.

#5

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19516

#6

Our crate had a 4 inch by 2 inch hole in it…and some other major damage…

Seems like we should start putting “FRAGILE” on the side or getting some of those shipping sensors that change color and such if the package is handled incorrectly in transit…these bots dont come cheap and the shipping companies should be more careful!

#7

*Originally posted by Gui Cavalcanti *
**We got our robot back from the Philadelphia Alliance Regional today. We didn’t get the crate back.

The robot’s currently sitting outside of the robotics lab, strapped to it’s pallet. The other 5 sides of our crate are completely gone, and the robot is covered in clear shrink wrap we didn’t put there. Our red light dome has been shattered, a side panel has been ripped off and put back on top of the robot. Who knows what other damage is lurking under the shrink wrap.

I’m a little ticked off. Has anything like this ever happened to anyone else, and how was the situation resolved?? **

Oh wow, I really can’t believe that. Based on your descriptions what I am thinking is that the whoever was handling your crate improperly forked it, and it went over. Then they probably try to fix it quick by wrapping it in a bunch of bubble wrap. It is not unheard of, but still inexcusable. You should make a bill and give it to the dryage company for their careless mistake.

#8

im not surprised that this happened. my brother works at the FedEx hub here in Indy and they could care less about the stuff that they ship. I have heard horror stories about some of the stuff that goes on. If something falls it’s “oops” or just just break stuff on purpose. They dont care if it says Fragile on it or not. They usually dont even look at that. I guess you can try calling FedEx to get their take on it, but I’m not sure how much luck you will have. They will make up some excuse that it was customers fault.

#9

That is really bad of your shipping company. Gross negligence on their part and what they should have done is sent a formal letter of apology for that damage and sent some form of reimbursement for damage. If you have documented reports that when the crate was taken from your pit area to the loading area for all crates in perfect condition you can go all you want on them.

#10

Is this a shipping company or a breaking company…our robot arrived late at Rutgers from Philly with the crate smashed. Our batteries had fallen out and our control board got smashed along with the machine being broken. THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!! After much duct tape for the controller and much time from our pitcrew, the robot is up and working properly again. We’ve been through two tough competitions and not even a thing broke on the machine…til now!!!

#11

222 handled their shipping fiasco in true FIRST fashion today. We’ve got another joystick packed and ready for you tomorrow. Now, if we all could do something to “fix” these ongoing and unnecessary shipping difficulties.

#12

Thank you to team 103!!! Your team is great and thanks a million. C-ya there tomorrow.

#13

I agree, 222, you guys handeled it well. I just think it’s a shame that we have huge crates that get constantly broken. Good luck and if you are at Champs, give any of us a ring and we will help you!

#14

When I started to open our crate at the Midwest Regiional I noticed that our door was more than half broken off. Our “door” is just one side that is screwed on that we take off. I am the one that opens and closes the crate. I closed it at GLR and I made sure to put plenty of screws in the door. I think over all we had 18-20 screws in the door. At Chicago, there were only 3 screws on the left side that were not broken off, the rest had all snapped in half. It did make it faster to get the robot out.
Because of this, when I closed it up to ship to Houston, I put close to 30 screws in it. If it comes open again, I’m gonna get upset.

Ok…thanks for letting me rant.

#15

4 or 5 years ago when I was walking to my teams pit first thing thursday morning I noticed the crate didn’t look very true. As the team and I got closer we noticed the bottom was virtually shattered. Needless to say as we inspected the bot we noticed the corners weren’t square and the drive shafts were all bent. After some calling we found out it was dropped about 4ft, some how. Every year theres always shipping horror stories. I’m not surprised to hear another.

Crating the bot is a subtle but important thing. Some teams put a fair amount of padding around and under there bot.

#16

so far my team has not had any real problems with damage crosses fingers but the price that we have to pay for that is an overweight crate. it is really not a win-win situation.

#17

These things are absurd. It is apparent that Fedex only does the shipping for FIRST because they can do things to make them money, like magically say that it was overweight and you have to pay, or actually causing problems that make them have to pay.

The storys about teams having to pay $700 dollars just to ship isn’t quite right, it sounds like fedex is extorting money from these teams, and FIRST should do something about it.

#18

I spoke too soon about my team’s damage.

While running the robot for the first time the day before yesterday, one of our drills is completely wrecked (it does nothing) and our whole frame is bent.

I’m about thisclose to calling FedEx and really giving it to them. They aren’t a monopoly, and if they get away with this, all teams are going to be paying thousands to ship their crates next year, which will come back as pieces of wire and some plywood.

#19

Right before we shipped our robot from chicago…it was put on the scale an weighed in at 615 (Overweight, but we wanted to ship alot of our tools and stuff so we didn’t have to take them on the plane) And magicly when our teacher spoke with fedex about the charges the crate had gained nearly 40 pounds… He told them he had seen it on the scale and that they might want to check theirs out and they kinda forgot about the extra weight all of a sudden… silly fed ex trying to rip us off!

#20

We ship our robot in a crate designed for medical implements. It’s surrounded by 5 inches of foam on all sides, and it’s water proof.

It’s also Yellow.

So far we know this crate has saved us twice. (it’s going into it’s 3th year) Nationals last year, alot of crates (including ours) were left outside in the rain. And again, last year, the crate was dropped (had to be at least 4 feet) upside down. We had a tower on our robot that was bent inhalf. Thankfully it was only cheap angle iron, and was only there to support something in the first few seconds. IT was easily replaced.

In the attach picture, that piece of metal is supposed to be a triangle.
http://www.tj2.org/2002/imagepages/p4250187.html