How Carriers Treat Your Package

Which shipping company treats your package the best?

With the Holidays being one of the busiest times of the year for shipping companies have you ever wondered how these businesses treat your packages between departure and destination? Are they gentle with your packages or are they less than kind with your shipments?

Popular Mechanics wanted to know this answer and so they devised a few special shipments with three major carriers like FedEx, UPS, and the United States Postal Service (USPS). Inside several boxes Popular Mechanics included a three-axis accelerometer, thermometer, and a data logger to see how well packages were handled on a trip across the United States making several stops. While only making about a dozen trips, this study may not prove conclusively who the best is, but the small experiment proved that United States Postal Service (USPS) is the most kind in the number of package drops and FedEx takes the top for least temperature changes during shipping.

One other interesting finding of the experiment was that when a package was marked “Fragile” or “This Side Up,” they were subject to even more rough treatment.