Dear FRC Community,
the last couple of years, I have spent a ton of time trying to figure out how to consistently participate in several FRC regional competitions and the Championship Event, as well as off-season events during the summer.
With 2 donated airbills that we graciously received, we are able to have a robot either accepted to an event or picked up via drayage. However, teams are not allowed to have robots shipped directly to a venue and we cannot have robot sent to drayage site, if you plan to only use an airbill from that event to send robot to its next event.
Thus, we were officially told the only way is to have it delivered to a hotel (where we are staying) or deliver it to a local team to handle.
So far, its easier said than done. Our crate normally weighs 1000lbs and dimensions are 69 x 48 x 48".
Please tell me there is an easier way to do this.
Do hotels have forklifts and/or pallet jacks?
I guess my point is with only 2 donated airbills, you can do just 1 more event at most. Yes, in the past its always been that way…however, now they wont allow us to use drayage as well, in addition to not shipping to the venue.
While everyone else in districts are getting a chance to play more events, it gets harder for other outside teams to do as much.
You might consider minimizing what you ship. We did this for Champs this year, everything fit in a small crate that weighed well under 400 lbs. You still have to deal with the fact that any crate weighing over 100 lbs is a pain to deal with, but if it’s less of a pain, it might be easier to get help?
It does sound like a serious challenge…fortunately, your team is really good at overcoming challenges!
Yep, we travel by bus on the east coast, but there seems to be fewer regional slots than there used to be. I forgot, does everyone get a air bill in the KoP like we used to? If so, could they be donated to other teams?
There are conversations with other Hawaii teams with respect to this hurdle, and I’m sure a few others are in the same boat.
Did you drive to CMP’s? If not, how did you deal with transporting tooling and spare parts?
Airbills dont come in the KOPs anymore. We put in an official request for exemption now, buts its very very limited vs. the support that we used to get.
I see this as a serious problem down the road, one that everyone knows is coming. As more and more events become district events, maybe its time to retire from FIRST. The costs are just too expensive to sustain. A $4-5,000 one way shipment from a mainland regional event back to Hawaii matches regional costs at this point.
At some point we ourselves are going to question whether the return on the learning experiences is worth that much money.
One of the reasons, we hate being from Hawaii.
We put it all in one crate, and we didn’t bring much. Remember…there are a bunch of other teams at the competitions, who are quite happy to help you! You don’t need to bring your whole shop with you.
Question: A few years back (2008), when each team was getting FedEx donations and shipping their robots to/from competition, how many shipments was FedEx sponsoring? I could guesstimate around 3750 airbills used (1500 Teams x 2.5 Average Airbills per team). (We got up to three free shipments back then, right?)
Now, with the default being bag and tag, how many Airbills does FedEx sponsor? I’m guessing 1800 tops (800 to/from CMP + 500 overseas/traveling teams x 2 airbill exemptions)
It seems like FedEx has nearly halved their sponsorship, is this correct? From what I remember, we went to bag and tag because the increased shipping costs were unsustainable. However, it seems like FedEx sponsorship has taken a sharp turn in the opposite direction. Didn’t they win the Championship sponsor/partner award a few years ago? Has their Sponsor level with FIRST gone down in recent years?
Don’t get me wrong, I am very appreciative of FedEx’s long standing support of FRC. I just wish they would cut some slack to teams that can’t compete locally.
Mike,
I love the questions.
Those are questions I hope would get answered as well.
If for some reason the sponsorship has gotten to a level that they are unable to help outside teams compete, then to me, FIRST has some serious sustainability issues with respect to competing outside your own local events.
The real issue that takes the cake now, is that FIRST will not accept Purchase Orders from public schools in Hawaii. Sorry, but our school (public schools) dont use credit cards to make payment in using school-level funding.
I spent so much time trying to do a roundabout method in getting our reg feeds paid in addition to helping other Hawaii public schools “trying” to participate in FIRST the last couple months…
For Hawaii would it be worth having two or three regional’s or district events in Hawaii? The cost saving in travel may well pay for the added events. With forty teams Hawaii should be able to have enough competition and other teams may still want to come there.
Glen,
You guys (Hawaiian teams) have an obvious argument for special assistance from FIRST. Last time I checked the option to drive to any competition outside of your island was absent. I would hope all mainland teams would support any steps needed to make sure teams coming from Hawaii and abroad received the help necessary to provide them with some of the same competition options we have on the mainland. Have you formally submitted a rationale to Frank and company to help resolve the unique issues you face?
In the meantime, have you considered booking hotels that have the ability to hold your crate until you arrive and rent a truck with lift gate to store and transport your crate to the event? Speaking on behalf of our team we can guarantee receiving/storing/transporting your crate any time you come to Vegas:) Or is the biggest issue prohibitive shipping costs?
There is too much at stake here to just ignore the situation… What would we do without the wonderful boxes of macadamia nut chocolates your teams have shared in the past?
I would be more than happy to support a subsidy for Hawaiian teams to help them compete in more than one regional. They have special limitations that require assistance.
If I remember correctly, FEDEX sponsorship is $1M/yr. Back in 2008, that $1M covered a lot of “ships”. Today, fuel costs increase, labor costs increase, everything goes up. If the donation was level funded, then the number of “ships” goes down.
Outside of shipping costs, check with the RD and the Regional Planning Committees of the events you plan to attend. They may be able to connect you and other travelling teams assistance.
I know that we would certainly do everything we could for you at the Queen City Regional - ie. you could ship your crate to us, we’d deliver it to the venue, help with hotel costs or home-stays, and meals for your team, or teams. We also have a fairly decent spare set of tools we would share with your team so you may be able to reduce the weight of shipping your equipment; We could work with logisitcs to get your robot to the next location.
One issue would be to make sure that our events (Hawaii and Queen City) don’t happen on the same weekend!
I’m sure there are other teams/planning committees that would offer similar help. I hope that when we convert to districts, teams in your situation would be offered exceptions. We can either watch the evolution of the next phase of FIRST, or we can do our best to influence and affect positive changes.
Second that. We also are able to support receiving a crate and have a pallet jack to be able to load into out team trailer. Coupled with 144 we could certainly help with QCR.
Dave,
great points.
We have actually addressed many of the things you point out.
Airfare costs, other important travel arrangements, and the timing of when all shipping arrangments are made cost us time/money when not done well in advanced. We are already paying $1100 per ticket just to fly to the events.
I have already asked for RD info, but with no responses yet. FIRST doesnt have the drayage setup yet (Duluth), which makes it difficult to even get quotes on shipments from there to wherever we need to send it in Dallas for this season.
We are now lucky to have found a gracious team to help us in Dallas…one that is very well known.
However, the issue is much bigger IMO.
I think we can all agree that this is true.
However, FIRST also converted every regional to be a Bag/Tag event by default. Aren’t the number of “ships” much lower as well?
FIRST just recently offered hardship grants for regional reg fees.
Why not offer it to teams attending outside regionals/international teams as well?
If FEDEX is sponsoring shipments, isnt it at no cost/much lower cost to them? Pass that down to the teams…
I’m still frustrated about the whole no PO from our school issue. Who is FIRST trying to serve? Schools right?
The last couple of years, the State of Hawaii has a compliance vendor form that every entity we do business with be in compliance before a Purchase Order can be made in excess of $2500.00. FIRST responsed by saying that they are a non-profit and that it didnt apply to them.
Our State procurement office noted that FIRST is not an exception and that they must do the paperwork in order to be registered.
I’ve done thousands, and I mean thousands of PO’s over the last 20 years.
Part of my job requires doing the ordering for programs within our school and in many cases for our entire complex.
This is the 1st time I ever heard of an entity refusing to do it.
In response, our Friends of Hawaii Robotics 501c3 has offered to help by allowing us to make a PO to them, and then they would make the payment to FIRST for us.
No problem right? OK, but its been a paperwork nightmare for me and trying to help other public schools in our State pay the reg fees also.
I can only speak about Hawaii public schools doing FRC.
The registration fee is by far the biggest hurdle in doing FIRST. When the schools acquire funding to pay for registration fee, they need to be able to spend it. I know of several schools that dealt with it last year, and in the end, ended up using hard earned “cash” money to pay for it, while losing the allocated school funding to cover the reg costs. One of the schools outright didnt participate in FIRST during the 2013 season and are now coming back this season.
We never had the issue last year, because I got a University of Hawaii grant which covered all of my reg fees as well as donated funds. UH has a P-card (credit card) that allows them to charge and pay for the registration costs.
