:ahh: Just checked the location of our Robot. It is headed for the NASA/VCU Regional in Richmond, VA. We are in Danville, VA. The Robot is now in Atlanta, GA at Local FedEx Facility. Did any others take this route ??
Should we be concerned ???
We are in NJ, and the competition is in Trenton, but first it is going to PA to be stored!
I think you should not be worried.
From what I understand, the robots go to a warehouse somewhere, get sorted into the proper regional, and then get shipped to the regional. Yes this may be the expensive way, but probably the most effect way
Typically robots go through their regional shipping centers, and then on to their final destinations. Often these centers aren’t very close to either end of the delivery. I remember our robots went a significant distance before arriving at their destination a town or two over. This may be the reason that the address is so out of the way. Or it could be something else.
the freight system works a bit like the airline system…there are big distribution hubs that all the packages go thru, even if it means going backwards to make it happen.
Just loooking at the tracking of our crate . . . . . . . Our crate went about 10 hours in the opposite direction to INDIANAPOLIS, IN and then came back and ended at ST. LOUIS, MO (its final resting place for 2 weeks)
This is especially true for Atlanta. Atlanta has one of the largest airports in the country. I’m not surprised at all that it went there. I have no clue where our robot went and all I care is that it’s in a good place. Hopefully it won’t get lost like that one team’s robot from last year where they built a whole new robot at nationals because theirs got lost. But I’m sure that was the first and last time it’s happened.
Our robot was delivered to Phoenix before noon on Wednesday - about 20 hours after it was picked up.
We dropped off our robot at 3:20 PM on the 21st. We have the required documentation. We mailed the information to FIRST as required. On TIMS they ask for verification of shipping including shipper and tracking number. We are the shipper and we have no tracking number. We have a warehouse receipt number. FIRST sometimes works in mysterious ways.
Ken
We were amused to have the opposite situation. It turns out that our robot is stored about 2 blocks away from our school in Houston :rolleyes:
I wasn’t all that surprised to see that our robot went all the way from Canada to Memphis, TN, before being delivered to New Hampshire.
Such is the nature of FedEx’s delivery system - by sending all of their packages to “hub” cities, they only have to schedule flights to and from these cities, and so they can deliver most packages in a reasonable amount of time instead of some packages very quickly and others very slowly.
I believe it also happened in 2004. Im not sure if you are refering to that same instance or not. If there was a robot missing in 2005 then this would be the second instance I believe. 
DELIVERED !!!
Feb 24, 2006 10:25 AM Delivered Richmond, VA
5:15 AM Departed FedEx location INDIANAPOLIS, IN
Feb 23, 2006 9:32 AM At local FedEx facility ATLANTA, GA
Feb 21, 2006 4:49 PM Package data transmitted to FedEx
9:28 AM Picked up GREENSBORO, NC
Yours and ours might’ve crossed paths, then. 1293’s went from Columbia to Charlotte to Memphis to Charlotte. The detour seemed a bit odd, but I figure that FedEx qualifies as a Group That Knows What They Are Doing.
It may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes it’s more efficient to let things happen in a general way than it is to check for more efficient special cases.
a few years ago a few of our crates were shipped to Canada eventhough we werent competing there, and because of some of the give aways johnson & johnson provided for us could not be taken across the border, we never got our crates of supplies back, so the fact that yours are about 2 states away from your regional, is not that big of a deal