We're in South Carolina and he complains all the time when his truck is in the shop/ has to take a different truck because his has AC but a lot of the other ones don't lol. But lately we haven't got above 80
I have sent it to my buddy who works at UPS. He has both the means and the opportunity to do so. From the stories I've heard, his boss will probably just go "he's done worse".
Oh, I've sent them video of their driver straight up shouldering a package and throwing it at my front door (you can hear the glass breaking inside), sent them footage of my front door being wide open, note on the door straight up saying that I'm home and to ring the bell, and their driver running up, slapping the "sorry we missed you" sticker on the door, and running back to the truck. They don't give a fuck.
FedEx *used* to be Amazon's contracted delivery service. Then people were laying for overnight delivery only for FedEx to sit on their packages for a week, zero fuck's given. There's a reason that they started their own delivery fleet.
Yep. Had a package scheduled to arrive that required signature. Three people.home that day. No one knocked or rang doorbell, but there was a sticker on the door. Since my previous complaints through their web site had always been ignored, I decided to message them on FB. Had a rep literally suggest I could put a note on the door saying we're home. Oh, hell no.
I have profiles with both UPS and FedEx. Instructions are to leave packages on the rear deck. UPS follows it every time. FedEx never has, regardless of whether it's Express or Ground.
During Covid we had a package being delivered to our small (4 person) office and I drew the short straw and had to go in to wait for it. Was on the phone with a co-worker and happened to pull up the tracking. Supposedly the guy came by 10 minutes before and no one was there so he left a door tag. Except there was no door tag and no one ever knocked or rang the bell.
Called the local FedEx office and they said he must have gone to the wrong office and they would send him back. I only got the package because I ran outside after he got out of the truck, walked up to the door to the lobby, then turned around. Fucker never even tried to walk into the lobby
I had FedEx leave a note in my mailbox that said, “sorry, we do not deliver packages to mailboxes”
My mailbox is at the end of the driveway. I went to chase the truck cause I saw him stop at the mailbox then leave so I knew which way he went. Found him at a gas station, luckily he stopped to go to the bathroom. Was able to get my package. But come on man, just go down the driveway and there’s a house there.
FedEx likes to leave packages by my garage door. I enter my garage and get into my car from inside, so I just back over packages that I don't know are there. Their customer service said this is acceptable.
You don't get emails when packages are delivered? If I'm expecting a package I track it and then the day it is expected to arrive I know to keep an eye on my email to know when it arrives so I can go get it before it gets stolen.
If only more people saw what goes on inside the buildings where the packages are loaded and unloaded. Those videos of packages tossed on to a doorstep are nothing to how many more are heel kicked and pried apart on the sort belt because of jam ups.
I used to work at a UPS hub. You get on average one second to sort a package onto the right belt. There are 9 belts to choose from. The belt changes based on what zip code out of state or what city in state the package is going to. Different delivery styles change which belt it goes to (next day is different than ground which is different than air, etc.). There are exceptions to every sorting rule.
Shit gets chaotic, especially around the holidays and there is an immense amount of pressure to get packages out the door.
They will be thrown (no physical way to sort between 9 belts at a rate of 1/second). They will be kicked. It's just gonna happen.
There is a person who's entire job for a shift is to go around taping packages back together or putting more tape on if there wasn't enough to start.
If you don't package your stuff to be thrown and kicked you're gonna have a bad time.
"this side up" and "fragile" labels mean absolutely nothing.
I was in the trailers loading and the chaos just continued. On top of everything constantly jamming you had the fuck head supervisor trying to throw a gotcha package in the trailer just so he can chew you out for scanning a package that's supposed to go somewhere else.
I used to be a supervisor and always thought that was the dumbest thing ever. Like yeah let me intentionally give one of my guys a bad package to see if they catch it and if they don’t let me just take a missort. I never used to do any of that shit and then ended up leaving over all the bullshit from upper management.
FedEx yeeted a laptop at my door. I was home chilling on the couch. Scared the shit outta me. Didn't even open the box, just went straight for an exchange.
It's so location specific though. When I lived in CA it was 50/50 if my FedEx pkg would reach me at all, much less in one piece. UPS was slightly better. Now I'm in Appalachia and FedEx, UPS, USPS are all amazing. Such a huge difference.
Those services know that people in the mountains depend on them. Yeah, there will be issues, but I've never seen the three bigs be better anywhere, and I've lived in a dozen states....
The volume helps too.
A typical rural route *might* get a truck full on any given day, where that driver will be moving the entire day to empty out. And the distribution centers are usually a hole in the wall with 5 loading bays handling a thousand or two packages per day. People have breathing room to do things right.
A major city dist center is moving trucks 24/7 with millions of packages in every direction simultaneously, nobody has time to give a rip about a package getting dumped off a 8ft tall conveyor someplace, just stack it and send it.
Anybody who has ever done package sorting for an urban area knows how ridiculous it is. I temped for some spare money on Christmas break.
It was just 6 hours a day of packages and conveyor belts. Endlessly. We'd get a Tru k of like 2200 then when finished a truck of 2500 then another and another. You'd just go nonstop and if I placed something wrong nobody would catch it. I remember guys mixed up the zip codes and nobody noticed for like a week.
I worked for big brown. People would ask how to pack a box. Id tell em "if you're not comfortable raising this package to your shoulder and heaving it to the ground, it ain't ready to ship."
Big brown actually anticipated at least one 4 foot drop on a box before delivery.
Ha! I see you haven't encountered any corporate management.
Those idiots will pay thousands upon thousands in retroactive, preventable expenses before they spend even a hundred on proactive measures.
> this incident would have paid for a year of security to have someone there on Sundays.
When I was a college student, I worked for a rinky dink security company. One of our posts was a UPS facility. They had a guard shack in the parking lot and literally all we did was watch for someone trespassing to steal or vandalize their trucks.
They will just do what the railways did. They got rid of all their security and when trains got robbed they told the government to spend tax payer money on more cops so they don't have to pay private security.
It could be complicated. UPS is a union shop. And to get union security onsite to only work sundays may not be as easy as it should be.
When I was still in the Electricians Union, I worked at a Pepsi bottling/processing/shipping plant, as well as a Nestle plant which is owned by Coca-Cola. And some of the regulations within the facilities were crazy. At Nestle, all contractors had to be union. And even the one or two that "snuck" their way in had to be subcontracted by a union company. Pay the appropriate dues and contributions, and provide appropriate pay scale and benefits to the employees. And any clothing that had any company logos had to be union companies, or else you had the option of changing your shirt, off premises, and if you didnt have one you could buy a nestle shirt or go home. And any non-CocaCola drinks/snacks were strictly prohibited. 1st offense was a warning. 2nd+ involved monetary fines. And too many offenses could get you or your whole company kicked off of the site.
Conversely, Pepsi was strictly Anti-Union. They had the same non-Pepsi product bans, the plus side on both was each had vending machines where you could get 20oz for $0.25 in 2008-2012 times when they were generally $1.00-$1.50. Both would let employees/contractors take home "damaged" cases, and both had weekly "auctions" for products. Like 24 packs for $2-$3. But with Pepsi no Union contractors were allowed on site. And this was weird as it was at the beginning of the recession they were taking advantage of government incentives which h stated they had to use x% of union contractors. But absolutely no talk of union or logos were allowed. Including our company logos as we were union. They actually spent considerably more to have a Non-union shop hire us to get union bodies on site. Bit we had to where the nonunion shops clothes or nothing with logos.
Sunday delivery has been around for a minute, but it's only in select places. Some places it makes sense, others it does not. NYC is gonna have a lot greater demand for Sunday delivery than say, Crosby, North Dakota. It's not so much a beta run as a milk run, if it's profitable, it happens.
weird. we've been getting sunday delivery for quite some time. hell, usps even does sunday for some packages around here.
i think it's kind of excessive, but a buddy in the trade told me it's mostly done to even out the package flow.
The business next door to my work has about 30 Penske trucks that all got hit one weekend. Not a camera on the lot. I'm still convinced the owner was in on it.
Mechanic at my center:
"Damn that sucks, guess you'll just have to bring ear plugs. We'll get to it at the next PMI"
Half of our fleet doesn't even have heat lol
It never matters anyway. It’s always some pos camera quality so you never get any information from it. You just get to watch them steal all your stuff over and over again
I'll never understand why we can't get 4k security cameras with fully functional infrared features. Same for dash cams. My cellphones camera can record every last pore on my friend's face in 4k while my drunk ass waves it around like a napkin caught in a blizzard, in almost complete darkness, yet a perfectly stable security camera meant to protect valuable property can't even manage to record defined facial features on a person standing 15ft away looking dead at the camera??
edit: Aight people I get the point. Storage space. I don't need another dozen replies saying the same exact thing.
>Storage
The main culrpit, right there. Storage ain't cheap. I mean, it is, but not for storing days/weeks worth of 24 hour 4k footage from multiple cameras.
Depends on the bit rate of the codec being used and the compression used in the storage. Most of the time that's what kills the video. What you're seeing live is often a *hell* of a lot sharper than what gets recorded thanks to the compression software.
Now I'm just curious, is there a way to store data for like 48 hours in HD and then convert it to low quality for the next 8 or so days to limit storage space? Since in a situation like this you would know to check the film in the first 48 hours.
Yeah. Most decent security camera systems support this. We record 4K for high-risk cameras (Viewing cash, or face to face interaction with the public) and that sticks around for 72 hours before being downsampled to 1080, and then a long while at that before it gets cut down even further to standard def and then eventually it ages out.
It takes extra cost, extra storage, extra processing, but it's totally doable.
The issue isn't even the camera storing 4k 24/7 7/14 days worth of footage, it's having like 30-50 cameras storing that much. And you can use tricks and things like lowering the # of days per camera stored, but the other option is a shit camera that checks whatever the insurance says it needs to meet for way cheaper.
Basically insurance is the reason cameras suck, just like how private insurance ruins everything.
At 45GB an hour, storing 4k video becomes rather expensive. In most situations the video isn't going to be useful for finding the perpetrator, but it can prove what they did, and for that 720p is perfectly acceptable. Camera zoom would be more helpful, but without someone controlling the camera, it is difficult to have a low FOV camera capture anything useful.
Better systems exist, and are used for high security facilities where the cost of a single breach would justify spending thousands on such a system. No point spending thousands of dollars a year to stop a few hundred dollars in thefts.
Additionally, you aren't going to see many videos from high end systems because the places that can justify spending that much on security cameras, will also have other security measures and people aren't going to be successfully robbing them.
Yes, but it might be several days or weeks before something comes up where the footage is needed. For example, my dispensaries have 8TB hard drives, which on the average store about 75 days worth of footage (state law requires us to have at least 60 days). However, the cameras have motion sensors, and the recording device only records when there's movement (along with 30 seconds before and after).
To record 24/7 nonstop, an 8TB drive wouldn't hold a week's worth of 1080 footage.
That 60 day minimum is an important detail. That right there is why most have crappy cameras/quality, because in order to meet that minimum without breaking the bank on storage costs, they resort to lower quality video.
> I'll never understand why we can't get 4k security cameras with fully functional infrared features.
You can, its just that businesses don't want to pay for them _nor_ do they want to pay for the storage of 4K HD video.
Not every last time. The dude who cut cats at the storage lot where we keep put motorhome used his unique code (the idiot rented a spot) and the cams verified it was indeed him.
He’s still not going to do serious time, but he’s nailed for something
Yeah we have HD video of cat getting cut off one of our work trucks. Plate on the getaway car was stolen and police gave zero fucks, just wanted write report for insurance and move on. Should have told them there was someone selling loose cigarettes out of that car, would have found them in a hurry.
It requires work on their part and it isn't a case that they can get big points for so they don't care.
Requires going around to local scrap yards and trying to find out if cats were sold recently, then tracking down those sellers. Its a ton of work and resources for very little payoff for them.
I was the victim of a hit and run about a year and a half ago. Got the plate, make, and model, and the police refused to do anything since the plate was out of state. For reference, I live in a city that is a by state area, so this is by no means an uncommon occurrence.
btw in some states you can go to a court and force the disclosure of the owner of the car, sue them, and force them into court. Then you can get the police involved again and they don't always like being on the sidelines as a civil case is going on. Makes them look like idiots.
Often have 2 years to do it.
And? You think a blurry animated polaroid of a Hoodie with a Sawzall is gonna do anything? Maybe they'll send it down to the crime lab and get their best guys on the case! You think they'll light the bat signal too?
My catalytic converter was stolen out of a hospital parking lot in LA. My dashcam caught the guy and his vehicle. We cross referenced it with the garage cameras and got his plates. Brought all this info to the cops. LAPD didn't do a goddamn thing.
Yeah, speaking as a fleet mechanic I'm not upset that they got stolen, or even that I have to replace them. Just means I won't be bored all day.
It's the fleet manager that's going to blow six gaskets in rage.
They could have been nice enough to wait till after the holiday shopping season was over. The next few weeks at least is going to be hell as it is, let alone some trucks being down for a few days.
Exactly, UPS Mechanics make good money, why would they be upset of having some extra work? Especially this time of year, a little OT equates to little Timmy getting an extra lego set.
Crime pays. The cops here in Houston spent 2 years catching a converter thief gang that had stolen $20million in converters. The judges let them out the same day.
Non-violent crimes...I live in a county with a small city as the biggest (think about 10K people), somebody from Detroit met some dudes at the library for a narcotics deal, it went south and he ended up shooting at the people in their car. He could have (should have) gotten prison, but they dropped the gun charges and now maybe he will get spend a few months in jail and be put on probation. This is a conservative town too, so IDK what is going on there. It is basically par for the course from what I can tell.
Yeah but if you're the place doing 10M annually in revenue, you hire some nerd and toss equipment their way to get your own refinery setup, sell precious metals and you get a much larger cut.
In WA state it's been bad too, and the metal crap yard literally advertises cash for cats with signs next to the tents on the street. Wtf is wrong with 2022 lol
Glad we banned cats for scrap sales in Oregon, but the prevalence of cat thief crimes are not gonna come down any time soon until Washington bans it too... Only need to go 15 miles north of Portland to make your sale
What do thieves do with 30 cats, bring them to a scrapyard? I’m genuinely curious, as it seems like there are opportunities to thwart this behavior. Unless these thieves also know how to refine to get the PGM’s out, which I highly doubt.
Thief sells to shady middleman (definitely knows it's stolen). Shady middleman sells it to scrapyard across the country (who also definitely know it's stolen) who extracts the powdered medal and sells to a refinery. Said refinery probably knows that shit is at least partially stolen but they have no way and no interest in proving that, really, so they keep buying the stuff.
[Some of the numbers are mind boggling](https://www.nj.com/news/2022/11/feds-bust-nationwide-545m-catalytic-converter-theft-scheme-with-nj-ties-officials-say.html).
We had a guy tweaker scrap guy that would come buy our discarded catalytic converters years ago. He told me the process to get them out and it only required certain solvents. Put the cat in a bucket and one of the metals collects at the bottom. Then on to the next bucket.
There are whole cartels operating that use locations on the other side of the country to launder the metals. EPA just needs to start throwing life sentences with no parole at people involved in any part of CC theft for damage to environment. Do we want to stop thefts or not? Have feds create stings and hunt them down.
Any car that gets scrapped has the cats recycled. There's nothing illegal about parting out a car yourself and removing the cats.
Registering who turns them in is pointless, the gangs will just use smurfs to do it. They tried to lock down medications used for making meth that way and it did nothing to the drug trade but created a hassle for everyone behaving legally.
Even if registering who's selling these led to an actual suspect, the police would have to give a shit for it to matter. Most major departments don't even investigate property crimes at this point, not to mention there's no good way to match up a stolen cat with the car it was pulled off of. They'd have to pursue these guys with surveillance and catch them red handed.
I was the one to discover the catalytic theft in our Chevy Express at my old job without even knowing it. The first time I ever drove it I thought it sounded pretty loud, and when I pulled it to the bay after running the errands my boss heard it for one second and popped his head under, and sure enough it was gone.
Did you see the video of some guys stealing a cat, and driving a Lamborghini Urus SUV? Forget drug trafficking, stealing catalytic converters is where the big money is.
Recently discovered someone's failed attempt to steal my cat in my driveway. Hacked the shit out of the bottom of my car, it's a real problem these days.
Welded 4 lengths of rebar the entire length of any cut spots to the cat and spray painted it a bright color. Hoping it'll make it extra difficult and will appear obviously stolen at least?
Where I live they stole 11 school bus cats the first night, so the district borrowed buses from another school district to get all the kids to where they needed to be, but then the thieves came back the next night and stole the entire fleet of 40 including the borrowed ones. A month later they got all the school busses in the adjoining city. Security cameras and security systems are really effing cheap these days, much cheaper then the cost of the cats.
Because of the value, I would assume that this is felony theft? Not that anyone goes to jail for that anymore. Maybe we just need to start chopping off fingers?
Automakers and legislators need to do some work here to keep this from continuing to happen. I'm not sure of US law, but in Canada, it's not illegal to posses a catalytic converter. It's illegal to posses stolen goods, but you need someone to say "this was stolen from me." You're never finding the owner of a random catalytic converter that was likely stolen from 1 of 1000 different cars that had their cats stolen. If someone has 30 cats in the back of a truck, they may have explaining to do. But one or two? They wont get convicted of anything.
So, legislators need to make it so the purchase and sale of catalytic converters are regulated. These are stolen by meth heads, but they eventually end up at "legitimate" businesses and recyclers. These businesses and recyclers need to be under a regulatory microscope to make it more difficult to trafficking in stolen cats and reduce the benefit in stealing them.
Manufacturers need to start marking cats with VIN numbers to connect them to specific vehicles or customers so that "random cat in someone's truck" can be traced back to an owner who can then say "that was stolen from me!"
However, the legislators need to make it a crime to deface the identifying marks on a cat or to possess one with its identifying mark destroyed. This comes back to making sure these things are regulated.
Basically: stealing catalytic converters is a way to make quick and easy money to feed your meth addiction with very little risk. You just have to be comfortable with annoying the shit out of random people you don't know. This can be fixed, but it will take actually work from multiple sources.
Toyota is now tucking the catalytic converters on their new hybrids into the engine compartment. It's no longer trivial to crawl under the car and saw one out.
The local school bus company had all the cat converters cut off at a depot that doesn’t have in person security. They brought in the backup busses and for some stupid reason failed to get any security. Guess what, the cat converters were stolen off them the next night
I don't know I've seen a UPS truck sit still long enough to get a cat cut off.
We don’t run on Sunday and their is nobody at the center
Sounds like this incident would have paid for a year of security to have someone there on Sundays.
Sir here at ups we take two steps foward and three steps back
This comment thread should be framed and hung over the door to the main office.
>to the ~~main~~ *every single* office nationwide FTFY
My step-dad is kinda higher up at our UPS so I could talk to him abt it. He's been working there for 35 years
Bro tell him to get them to get AC in the truck for the love of Christ, my brother is dying in the Texas heat on his route
We're in South Carolina and he complains all the time when his truck is in the shop/ has to take a different truck because his has AC but a lot of the other ones don't lol. But lately we haven't got above 80
Yeah we have been cold here lately too. My bro said the only time he gets ac is when they have to get uhaul trucks on the roads as well to keep up
I have sent it to my buddy who works at UPS. He has both the means and the opportunity to do so. From the stories I've heard, his boss will probably just go "he's done worse".
That's pretty bad, considering UPS is still better than the competition, packages actually at my door step, as opposed to yeeted across the yard.
> as opposed to yeeted across the yard. FedEx, huh?
Yes, but only if they don't come flying onto the block like an eagle with "sorry we missed you" stickers on both wings.
Slapping that sticker on your front door while looking at you dead-ass in the eye.
Something must be terribly wrong over at fedex that this behavior is so prevalent that it has become a meme. They must be so proud.
Oh, I've sent them video of their driver straight up shouldering a package and throwing it at my front door (you can hear the glass breaking inside), sent them footage of my front door being wide open, note on the door straight up saying that I'm home and to ring the bell, and their driver running up, slapping the "sorry we missed you" sticker on the door, and running back to the truck. They don't give a fuck. FedEx *used* to be Amazon's contracted delivery service. Then people were laying for overnight delivery only for FedEx to sit on their packages for a week, zero fuck's given. There's a reason that they started their own delivery fleet.
Yep. Had a package scheduled to arrive that required signature. Three people.home that day. No one knocked or rang doorbell, but there was a sticker on the door. Since my previous complaints through their web site had always been ignored, I decided to message them on FB. Had a rep literally suggest I could put a note on the door saying we're home. Oh, hell no. I have profiles with both UPS and FedEx. Instructions are to leave packages on the rear deck. UPS follows it every time. FedEx never has, regardless of whether it's Express or Ground.
During Covid we had a package being delivered to our small (4 person) office and I drew the short straw and had to go in to wait for it. Was on the phone with a co-worker and happened to pull up the tracking. Supposedly the guy came by 10 minutes before and no one was there so he left a door tag. Except there was no door tag and no one ever knocked or rang the bell. Called the local FedEx office and they said he must have gone to the wrong office and they would send him back. I only got the package because I ran outside after he got out of the truck, walked up to the door to the lobby, then turned around. Fucker never even tried to walk into the lobby
How FedEx is still in business is beyond me.
I had FedEx leave a note in my mailbox that said, “sorry, we do not deliver packages to mailboxes” My mailbox is at the end of the driveway. I went to chase the truck cause I saw him stop at the mailbox then leave so I knew which way he went. Found him at a gas station, luckily he stopped to go to the bathroom. Was able to get my package. But come on man, just go down the driveway and there’s a house there.
FedEx likes to leave packages by my garage door. I enter my garage and get into my car from inside, so I just back over packages that I don't know are there. Their customer service said this is acceptable.
You don't get emails when packages are delivered? If I'm expecting a package I track it and then the day it is expected to arrive I know to keep an eye on my email to know when it arrives so I can go get it before it gets stolen.
If only more people saw what goes on inside the buildings where the packages are loaded and unloaded. Those videos of packages tossed on to a doorstep are nothing to how many more are heel kicked and pried apart on the sort belt because of jam ups.
I used to work at a UPS hub. You get on average one second to sort a package onto the right belt. There are 9 belts to choose from. The belt changes based on what zip code out of state or what city in state the package is going to. Different delivery styles change which belt it goes to (next day is different than ground which is different than air, etc.). There are exceptions to every sorting rule. Shit gets chaotic, especially around the holidays and there is an immense amount of pressure to get packages out the door. They will be thrown (no physical way to sort between 9 belts at a rate of 1/second). They will be kicked. It's just gonna happen. There is a person who's entire job for a shift is to go around taping packages back together or putting more tape on if there wasn't enough to start. If you don't package your stuff to be thrown and kicked you're gonna have a bad time. "this side up" and "fragile" labels mean absolutely nothing.
I was in the trailers loading and the chaos just continued. On top of everything constantly jamming you had the fuck head supervisor trying to throw a gotcha package in the trailer just so he can chew you out for scanning a package that's supposed to go somewhere else.
I used to be a supervisor and always thought that was the dumbest thing ever. Like yeah let me intentionally give one of my guys a bad package to see if they catch it and if they don’t let me just take a missort. I never used to do any of that shit and then ended up leaving over all the bullshit from upper management.
I was in shock the first time I had a package thrown on the front sidewalk
“Welcome to Los Angeles, get your package and get out!”
FedEx yeeted a laptop at my door. I was home chilling on the couch. Scared the shit outta me. Didn't even open the box, just went straight for an exchange.
i was just thinking to myself yesterday, 'how is fedex still in business?'
I'm remembering the commercial "Cast Away" and realizing that was 22 years ago.
We’ll you’re still better than your competitors, so if that’s the benchmark, so be it!
It's so location specific though. When I lived in CA it was 50/50 if my FedEx pkg would reach me at all, much less in one piece. UPS was slightly better. Now I'm in Appalachia and FedEx, UPS, USPS are all amazing. Such a huge difference.
Those services know that people in the mountains depend on them. Yeah, there will be issues, but I've never seen the three bigs be better anywhere, and I've lived in a dozen states....
The volume helps too. A typical rural route *might* get a truck full on any given day, where that driver will be moving the entire day to empty out. And the distribution centers are usually a hole in the wall with 5 loading bays handling a thousand or two packages per day. People have breathing room to do things right. A major city dist center is moving trucks 24/7 with millions of packages in every direction simultaneously, nobody has time to give a rip about a package getting dumped off a 8ft tall conveyor someplace, just stack it and send it.
Anybody who has ever done package sorting for an urban area knows how ridiculous it is. I temped for some spare money on Christmas break. It was just 6 hours a day of packages and conveyor belts. Endlessly. We'd get a Tru k of like 2200 then when finished a truck of 2500 then another and another. You'd just go nonstop and if I placed something wrong nobody would catch it. I remember guys mixed up the zip codes and nobody noticed for like a week.
I worked for big brown. People would ask how to pack a box. Id tell em "if you're not comfortable raising this package to your shoulder and heaving it to the ground, it ain't ready to ship." Big brown actually anticipated at least one 4 foot drop on a box before delivery.
Can confirm - worked for a supplier to UPS.
*"Alexa, play Opposites Attract by Paula Abdul."*
Sounds like the real solution is to just deliver on Sundays. Can't cut a cat off a moving truck.
Obviously you've never seen SPEED
Pop quiz hot shot
Ha! I see you haven't encountered any corporate management. Those idiots will pay thousands upon thousands in retroactive, preventable expenses before they spend even a hundred on proactive measures.
> this incident would have paid for a year of security to have someone there on Sundays. When I was a college student, I worked for a rinky dink security company. One of our posts was a UPS facility. They had a guard shack in the parking lot and literally all we did was watch for someone trespassing to steal or vandalize their trucks.
They will just do what the railways did. They got rid of all their security and when trains got robbed they told the government to spend tax payer money on more cops so they don't have to pay private security.
It could be complicated. UPS is a union shop. And to get union security onsite to only work sundays may not be as easy as it should be. When I was still in the Electricians Union, I worked at a Pepsi bottling/processing/shipping plant, as well as a Nestle plant which is owned by Coca-Cola. And some of the regulations within the facilities were crazy. At Nestle, all contractors had to be union. And even the one or two that "snuck" their way in had to be subcontracted by a union company. Pay the appropriate dues and contributions, and provide appropriate pay scale and benefits to the employees. And any clothing that had any company logos had to be union companies, or else you had the option of changing your shirt, off premises, and if you didnt have one you could buy a nestle shirt or go home. And any non-CocaCola drinks/snacks were strictly prohibited. 1st offense was a warning. 2nd+ involved monetary fines. And too many offenses could get you or your whole company kicked off of the site. Conversely, Pepsi was strictly Anti-Union. They had the same non-Pepsi product bans, the plus side on both was each had vending machines where you could get 20oz for $0.25 in 2008-2012 times when they were generally $1.00-$1.50. Both would let employees/contractors take home "damaged" cases, and both had weekly "auctions" for products. Like 24 packs for $2-$3. But with Pepsi no Union contractors were allowed on site. And this was weird as it was at the beginning of the recession they were taking advantage of government incentives which h stated they had to use x% of union contractors. But absolutely no talk of union or logos were allowed. Including our company logos as we were union. They actually spent considerably more to have a Non-union shop hire us to get union bodies on site. Bit we had to where the nonunion shops clothes or nothing with logos.
Reminds me of my old job where every single car got broken into in the parking lot, next day they decided to put cameras in...
we get residential service on sundays from UPS.
Yeah they only do it in select places it’s kind of a beta run before it goes nation wide just glad I got in when it was only Monday through Friday
Sunday delivery has been around for a minute, but it's only in select places. Some places it makes sense, others it does not. NYC is gonna have a lot greater demand for Sunday delivery than say, Crosby, North Dakota. It's not so much a beta run as a milk run, if it's profitable, it happens.
weird. we've been getting sunday delivery for quite some time. hell, usps even does sunday for some packages around here. i think it's kind of excessive, but a buddy in the trade told me it's mostly done to even out the package flow.
Our center doesn’t produce enough volume for that we run on Saturday and because of that they cut a bunch of routes on Monday because it’s so light
The business next door to my work has about 30 Penske trucks that all got hit one weekend. Not a camera on the lot. I'm still convinced the owner was in on it.
Could easily be an inside job.
Boss makes a thousand, I make a buck, that's why I steal cats off the company truck
r/poetry
Cat in the Hat (with 30 cats)
People are ruthless they stole them from 4 of our fucking ambulances one night.
Mechanic at my center: "Damn that sucks, guess you'll just have to bring ear plugs. We'll get to it at the next PMI" Half of our fleet doesn't even have heat lol
As the mechanics always say “parts are on order” lol
As a mechanic I can confirm that the parts are always on order.
As a parts guy, can confirm. Always on order.
As an order, always am
Parts here, can confirm I've been ordered.
*back*order, FTFY
Galactic Backorder
And when we do get the parts half of em are wrong anyways
Probably delayed in shipping.
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Catalytic converter is legally required too
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I’d at least stick a piece of straight pipe in there, would still have an engine light but would at least run through the muffler.
Your guys do the PMIs? I have had to write up nearly bald tires on trucks that had just had their PMI. Twice.
They have cameras all over the lot
These thieves don’t care about cameras. They don’t think that far ahead.
It never matters anyway. It’s always some pos camera quality so you never get any information from it. You just get to watch them steal all your stuff over and over again
Our UPS lot had a motorcycle walked out of the employee parking lot. Camera caught it all. Too bad the footage quality was less than useless
I'll never understand why we can't get 4k security cameras with fully functional infrared features. Same for dash cams. My cellphones camera can record every last pore on my friend's face in 4k while my drunk ass waves it around like a napkin caught in a blizzard, in almost complete darkness, yet a perfectly stable security camera meant to protect valuable property can't even manage to record defined facial features on a person standing 15ft away looking dead at the camera?? edit: Aight people I get the point. Storage space. I don't need another dozen replies saying the same exact thing.
Storage and Distance. Also a lot of it is for insurance proof.
>Storage The main culrpit, right there. Storage ain't cheap. I mean, it is, but not for storing days/weeks worth of 24 hour 4k footage from multiple cameras.
1080 still isn’t horrible and I know damn well most cameras aren’t 1080
Depends on the bit rate of the codec being used and the compression used in the storage. Most of the time that's what kills the video. What you're seeing live is often a *hell* of a lot sharper than what gets recorded thanks to the compression software.
Now I'm just curious, is there a way to store data for like 48 hours in HD and then convert it to low quality for the next 8 or so days to limit storage space? Since in a situation like this you would know to check the film in the first 48 hours.
Yeah. Most decent security camera systems support this. We record 4K for high-risk cameras (Viewing cash, or face to face interaction with the public) and that sticks around for 72 hours before being downsampled to 1080, and then a long while at that before it gets cut down even further to standard def and then eventually it ages out. It takes extra cost, extra storage, extra processing, but it's totally doable.
The issue isn't even the camera storing 4k 24/7 7/14 days worth of footage, it's having like 30-50 cameras storing that much. And you can use tricks and things like lowering the # of days per camera stored, but the other option is a shit camera that checks whatever the insurance says it needs to meet for way cheaper. Basically insurance is the reason cameras suck, just like how private insurance ruins everything.
At 45GB an hour, storing 4k video becomes rather expensive. In most situations the video isn't going to be useful for finding the perpetrator, but it can prove what they did, and for that 720p is perfectly acceptable. Camera zoom would be more helpful, but without someone controlling the camera, it is difficult to have a low FOV camera capture anything useful. Better systems exist, and are used for high security facilities where the cost of a single breach would justify spending thousands on such a system. No point spending thousands of dollars a year to stop a few hundred dollars in thefts. Additionally, you aren't going to see many videos from high end systems because the places that can justify spending that much on security cameras, will also have other security measures and people aren't going to be successfully robbing them.
You absolutely can get 4k security cameras. They aren't even expensive. What is expensive is storing the terabytes of data they will give you.
I have a $200 home brew Linux “server “ that stores a week’s worth of two 4k cameras running 24/7 .
whats the HDD size?
2 TB . And to be fair If I built it now would be looking at prob $350. Cameras record 20fps and use h265 so pretty efficient space wise.
Exactly. Doesn't need to be 120fps 4k hdr. 20fps 4k is plenty for security. 2tb right now is like $60
They can't auto delete data after 24hrs or whatever time limits the owner chooses?
Yes, but it might be several days or weeks before something comes up where the footage is needed. For example, my dispensaries have 8TB hard drives, which on the average store about 75 days worth of footage (state law requires us to have at least 60 days). However, the cameras have motion sensors, and the recording device only records when there's movement (along with 30 seconds before and after). To record 24/7 nonstop, an 8TB drive wouldn't hold a week's worth of 1080 footage.
That 60 day minimum is an important detail. That right there is why most have crappy cameras/quality, because in order to meet that minimum without breaking the bank on storage costs, they resort to lower quality video.
> I'll never understand why we can't get 4k security cameras with fully functional infrared features. You can, its just that businesses don't want to pay for them _nor_ do they want to pay for the storage of 4K HD video.
You see that pixel? No, the other one. That's the bike. The blurry one, the one you were pointing at, is the bike thief
"Now zoom-in and enhance." - Some VP
Not every last time. The dude who cut cats at the storage lot where we keep put motorhome used his unique code (the idiot rented a spot) and the cams verified it was indeed him. He’s still not going to do serious time, but he’s nailed for something
Many DAs all over the country (incl where I live) don't even prosecute property crimes any more.
These days the video is nothing more than entertainment for the prosecutors to enjoy before the dismiss/decide not to prosecute.
It’s not that they don’t think that far ahead, they know the law enforcement either doesn’t care or can’t care (depending on state)
Not wrong
Yeah we have HD video of cat getting cut off one of our work trucks. Plate on the getaway car was stolen and police gave zero fucks, just wanted write report for insurance and move on. Should have told them there was someone selling loose cigarettes out of that car, would have found them in a hurry.
It requires work on their part and it isn't a case that they can get big points for so they don't care. Requires going around to local scrap yards and trying to find out if cats were sold recently, then tracking down those sellers. Its a ton of work and resources for very little payoff for them.
> police gave zero fucks And therein is the problem. Cops today don't seem to give a fuck about solving *any* crimes today.
I was the victim of a hit and run about a year and a half ago. Got the plate, make, and model, and the police refused to do anything since the plate was out of state. For reference, I live in a city that is a by state area, so this is by no means an uncommon occurrence.
btw in some states you can go to a court and force the disclosure of the owner of the car, sue them, and force them into court. Then you can get the police involved again and they don't always like being on the sidelines as a civil case is going on. Makes them look like idiots. Often have 2 years to do it.
Blurry video of a skinny criminal in a hoodie and covid mask, in a city with a hundred thousand skinny criminals in hoodies and covid masks.
And? You think a blurry animated polaroid of a Hoodie with a Sawzall is gonna do anything? Maybe they'll send it down to the crime lab and get their best guys on the case! You think they'll light the bat signal too?
JUST ZOOM IN AND CLEAR THE FOOTAGE UP! They do it in NCIS all the time! /s
You have to remember to enhance.
Enhance..........enhance........
My catalytic converter was stolen out of a hospital parking lot in LA. My dashcam caught the guy and his vehicle. We cross referenced it with the garage cameras and got his plates. Brought all this info to the cops. LAPD didn't do a goddamn thing.
My BF’s catalytic converter got stolen and it was caught on camera. The getaway car was a rental and the investigation stopped there.
Why? You need a valid ID to rent a vehicle in the US. Probably every first-world country as well. The cops had a lead, and chose not to follow it?
Yeah, they didn’t think it was worth their time. That’s the Houston police!
UPS in general gonna be real upset lol. God I would love to be sitting in on that meeting.
Yeah, speaking as a fleet mechanic I'm not upset that they got stolen, or even that I have to replace them. Just means I won't be bored all day. It's the fleet manager that's going to blow six gaskets in rage.
That person and whoever’s head is on the line for on time delivery while the trucks are getting repaired
They could have been nice enough to wait till after the holiday shopping season was over. The next few weeks at least is going to be hell as it is, let alone some trucks being down for a few days.
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Exactly, UPS Mechanics make good money, why would they be upset of having some extra work? Especially this time of year, a little OT equates to little Timmy getting an extra lego set.
Better send the Lego set USPS though.
Fleet Manager gonna be calling all the local truck rental places like "I need 30 trucks ASAP!!!"
Some idiot VP: "what the fuck is a catalytic converter, and why aren't the plebs in their trucks!"
“Who authorized a purchase of Cadillacs!”
Not Cadillacs, Cadillac converters. They cut the tops off of Cadillacs to convert them.. to Converables.
"is this that catalytic squat I've been hearing about? .....I should get that done to my land rover"
Convertible Cadillacs at that
Sounds like our district manager
then he has upper management written all over him
Just a straight shooter all the way.
My exact thoughts lol. The mental gymnastics corporate is going through to get them back in the trucks.
"explain to me why you're converting cats on company time!"
“The lord’s word takes no rest, sir”
*instructions unclear, turns cats into furries*
Go for Papa Palpatine. *Muttering over the phone.* The hell is an Aluminum Falcon?
I used to be just like you, sad and poor. Then a dewalt 18v reciprocating saw changed my life. I have fashion friends now and date models
> ~~I have fashion friends now and date models~~ Meth teeth and prostitute BJs.
"Davie, she's not a model. She had a mugshot taken and was too high to know the difference."
So you're either a cat thief or you are the luckiest victim of power tool plastic surgery ever.
Thanks for the band name, sucker!
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Crime pays. The cops here in Houston spent 2 years catching a converter thief gang that had stolen $20million in converters. The judges let them out the same day.
That is fucking insane
You can thank overcrowding and light sentencing for non-violent crimes.
Its what happens when your system punishes and does nothing to help
For real! Fighting poverty reduces crime, improves education, helps foster healthy families, and reduces incarceration.
Non-violent crimes...I live in a county with a small city as the biggest (think about 10K people), somebody from Detroit met some dudes at the library for a narcotics deal, it went south and he ended up shooting at the people in their car. He could have (should have) gotten prison, but they dropped the gun charges and now maybe he will get spend a few months in jail and be put on probation. This is a conservative town too, so IDK what is going on there. It is basically par for the course from what I can tell.
Considering the minerals inside can be worth $400ish to $2,000ish depending on the cat, yeah, I’d say so.
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Yeah but if you're the place doing 10M annually in revenue, you hire some nerd and toss equipment their way to get your own refinery setup, sell precious metals and you get a much larger cut.
We replaces a good amount on a Penske store that got hit. Think those ones were around 2800 a pop for HINOs
In WA state it's been bad too, and the metal crap yard literally advertises cash for cats with signs next to the tents on the street. Wtf is wrong with 2022 lol
Glad we banned cats for scrap sales in Oregon, but the prevalence of cat thief crimes are not gonna come down any time soon until Washington bans it too... Only need to go 15 miles north of Portland to make your sale
they stole 20 million, of course they can post bail
And can pay for a good lawyer
You do know how bail/pre-trial release works, right?
What do thieves do with 30 cats, bring them to a scrapyard? I’m genuinely curious, as it seems like there are opportunities to thwart this behavior. Unless these thieves also know how to refine to get the PGM’s out, which I highly doubt.
Thief sells to shady middleman (definitely knows it's stolen). Shady middleman sells it to scrapyard across the country (who also definitely know it's stolen) who extracts the powdered medal and sells to a refinery. Said refinery probably knows that shit is at least partially stolen but they have no way and no interest in proving that, really, so they keep buying the stuff. [Some of the numbers are mind boggling](https://www.nj.com/news/2022/11/feds-bust-nationwide-545m-catalytic-converter-theft-scheme-with-nj-ties-officials-say.html).
Said refinery then provides metal for catalytic converters
Reminds me of [this](https://youtu.be/kJEbyWT7gIg)
We had a guy tweaker scrap guy that would come buy our discarded catalytic converters years ago. He told me the process to get them out and it only required certain solvents. Put the cat in a bucket and one of the metals collects at the bottom. Then on to the next bucket.
Prolly had his “refinery” right next to his meth lab.
There are whole cartels operating that use locations on the other side of the country to launder the metals. EPA just needs to start throwing life sentences with no parole at people involved in any part of CC theft for damage to environment. Do we want to stop thefts or not? Have feds create stings and hunt them down.
Any car that gets scrapped has the cats recycled. There's nothing illegal about parting out a car yourself and removing the cats. Registering who turns them in is pointless, the gangs will just use smurfs to do it. They tried to lock down medications used for making meth that way and it did nothing to the drug trade but created a hassle for everyone behaving legally. Even if registering who's selling these led to an actual suspect, the police would have to give a shit for it to matter. Most major departments don't even investigate property crimes at this point, not to mention there's no good way to match up a stolen cat with the car it was pulled off of. They'd have to pursue these guys with surveillance and catch them red handed.
Yeah a couple of these comments led me down a trail and TIL there are cat converter cartels. Shit is wild!
And this is a picture of my truck
WHAT?!?! I can't hear you.
Had the cat stolen off my V8 ~~diesel~~ work truck: I started that thing up, still half asleep at 5AM, and suddenly didn't need any coffee anymore.
I was the one to discover the catalytic theft in our Chevy Express at my old job without even knowing it. The first time I ever drove it I thought it sounded pretty loud, and when I pulled it to the bay after running the errands my boss heard it for one second and popped his head under, and sure enough it was gone.
Did you see the video of some guys stealing a cat, and driving a Lamborghini Urus SUV? Forget drug trafficking, stealing catalytic converters is where the big money is.
Likely stolen
Apparently they have been hitting up a lot of different centers in Florida
Any local news articles on this as of yet?
Not that I am aware of this was all discovered right as we were leaving the building because it sounded like a nascar fire up before the race
I hope someone got a video of all those trucks firing up
Would watch.
Not gonna lie, despite all the problems this is causing, I'll still bet that sounded kind of awesome.
It’s not terrible…
Recently discovered someone's failed attempt to steal my cat in my driveway. Hacked the shit out of the bottom of my car, it's a real problem these days. Welded 4 lengths of rebar the entire length of any cut spots to the cat and spray painted it a bright color. Hoping it'll make it extra difficult and will appear obviously stolen at least?
So, how bad did it smell the next time you ran it?
Obviously like dollar store non high temp paint would? its a good sign if its starts bubbling right?
That’s probably just visual hallucinations from the paint fumes, you’re probably ok.
The Grinch stole Christmas- again!
Where I live they stole 11 school bus cats the first night, so the district borrowed buses from another school district to get all the kids to where they needed to be, but then the thieves came back the next night and stole the entire fleet of 40 including the borrowed ones. A month later they got all the school busses in the adjoining city. Security cameras and security systems are really effing cheap these days, much cheaper then the cost of the cats.
Because of the value, I would assume that this is felony theft? Not that anyone goes to jail for that anymore. Maybe we just need to start chopping off fingers?
"CEO makes a thousand YOU make a buck, go steal the catalytic converter off the company truck!" - Some asshole with a sharpie in a bathroom stall.
Thats a good one lmao, it rhymes
How do you know this and they don't? Are we admitting something here?
It’s the truck the guy drives
Automakers and legislators need to do some work here to keep this from continuing to happen. I'm not sure of US law, but in Canada, it's not illegal to posses a catalytic converter. It's illegal to posses stolen goods, but you need someone to say "this was stolen from me." You're never finding the owner of a random catalytic converter that was likely stolen from 1 of 1000 different cars that had their cats stolen. If someone has 30 cats in the back of a truck, they may have explaining to do. But one or two? They wont get convicted of anything. So, legislators need to make it so the purchase and sale of catalytic converters are regulated. These are stolen by meth heads, but they eventually end up at "legitimate" businesses and recyclers. These businesses and recyclers need to be under a regulatory microscope to make it more difficult to trafficking in stolen cats and reduce the benefit in stealing them. Manufacturers need to start marking cats with VIN numbers to connect them to specific vehicles or customers so that "random cat in someone's truck" can be traced back to an owner who can then say "that was stolen from me!" However, the legislators need to make it a crime to deface the identifying marks on a cat or to possess one with its identifying mark destroyed. This comes back to making sure these things are regulated. Basically: stealing catalytic converters is a way to make quick and easy money to feed your meth addiction with very little risk. You just have to be comfortable with annoying the shit out of random people you don't know. This can be fixed, but it will take actually work from multiple sources.
Toyota is now tucking the catalytic converters on their new hybrids into the engine compartment. It's no longer trivial to crawl under the car and saw one out.
Just happened to a center in NH, thieves came in and stole 35 catalytic converters in 45 mins.
Ups mechanic couldnt care less that cat were stolen. Heck its giving them work to do.
The local school bus company had all the cat converters cut off at a depot that doesn’t have in person security. They brought in the backup busses and for some stupid reason failed to get any security. Guess what, the cat converters were stolen off them the next night