Duh!
Feb 27, 2010 5:32 AM-On FedEx vehicle for delivery-Yes, but today is Monday. That was Saturday.
Scheduled for delivery next business day-Yes, in TWO DAYS, and its winter don’t you know!
That happened with my R-M order this weekend.
I wish they would ship midweek, rather than on Mondays.
How would shipping midweek help?
in transit as opposed to sitting…on the Fedex Truck in Long Island at 20 degrees for 2.5 days
I go through the same thing as anything shipped ground from the left coast takes five business days/seven days to get to Connecticut. But a week is a week, and it will always have a weekend somewhere. It’s in the warehouse, anyway. Unless UPS is running late, I’ll be picking up my R-M at the warehouse tonight - but I’m not sweating it. You can always pay for expedited shipping, no?
(I will add, as an aside, that with the shipping business being slow, last Fall I was getting a lot of Friday deliveries that had otherwise been scheduled for Mondays - they’d come to the local warehouses early enough that they made second runs to stay ahead of schedule, because the drivers hadn’t been going out with much in the mornings and were finishing early in the day. That’s been pretty cool - for us, I guess.)
Yep. 20 degrees in Oklahoma or Iowa is better. 
That’s my point. It’s going to sit somewhere if you’re dealing with a location where it’s likely to take more than Monday to Friday to ship. For the rest of us, shipping midweek unnecessarily imposes a weekend layover.
If you’re in a location where it’s likely to occur that it takes longer than Monday to Friday, I think you might need to spring for 2-day or 3-day shipping.
I’ve been told by more than one person that UPS/FedEx packages are on the move during weekends. They don’t normally stop on Friday and start up again on Sunday.
At least as far as UPS is concerned, packages may sit in trucks but the trucks sit in the warehouses over the weekend. No idea on Fedex.
The only time we’ve ever frozen wine was in transit to FL (comedy, eh?) when we tried to catch a rare spell of weather under 70F in FL and shipped a couple of boxes for someone and they froze en route. Luckily it was just two boxes and easily replaced.
Avoiding weekends in warehouses is a concern if you’re in socal or FL or LA and it’s pushing too warm, but when it’s cold, the warehouse is probably the best place for it to sit, and the far larger risk is being enroute overnight through CO. It gets a lot colder in January at night at 9-10k elevation over Vail Pass than it does in a warehouse in NY, at least from what I see watching weather during shipping season.
Josh
I ordered a case of wine from Clos du Mont Olivet last summer.
I specifically asked them in bold print in my letter NOT to ship over the summer (I paid upfront).
So, I was flabbergasted when the wine was delivered not long after, on a Monday, after a very hot (35°C) weekend in August.
I called up the transport company, and they confirmed the wine had not been stored in a temperature-controlled warehouse. I then called up the estate, and the owner (!) gave me some half-baked explanation that really disappointed me. I said to him HEY, I asked for that of of RESPECT for YOUR WINE!!! I want to serve your wine here in Bordeaux to show how good CDP can be. So why in the world have you gone and done a thing like that? I’m sure she just shrugged her shoulders…
Yours sincerely,
Alex R.
same thing for me. luckily it was somewhat mild in DC this past weekend. wines arrive today!
It has been in a warehouse all weekend.
In any case, 25 degrees isn’t going to hurt the wine, esp. those monster cabs you buy. 
Probably true. 18% ABV should be ok. ![[thumbs-up.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/f84c5acc11486ee4baba6dee6cf61dbd133abb18.gif "[thumbs-up.gif]"){kind=small}
This is WHY I ship all my wine via two day or three day air (if available). It guarantees the day it will arrive. the few bucks I can save on ground shipment , itsn’t worth risking fucking up my hard earned wine purchases…especially since I live in Florida, we have to take extra care. Some of my friends ship ground, I am just not willing to risk it unless its being shipped from a seller in Florida (during winter months only).
Penny wise, pound foolish…
now if I lived in Ca. and ground was a three day affair, I might have a different opinion, but shipping up and down the east coast or across the country, its just not worth the risk.
Living in the NorthEast, I prefer ground shipping.
It’s half the price, and at least I’d like the option of telling the winery how I’d like it shipped.
With UPS, wine shipped from California to the East Coast is probably riding a choo-choo over the weekend and you will ultimately get your wine in less total days than if it is shipped on a Monday. However (and unfortunately) with ground shipments nothing is guaranteed.
Randy,
We have not seen any variation in the 5 business days from SF → East Coast with UPS, regardless of day shipped. Honestly not once that I know of slower nor faster though I’m sure it’s occurred w/o my noticing. We have asked a lot of questions of our reps about how packages get routed. They make the choices between trucks and trains based on load and wouldn’t make any guarantee but said that more was by truck than by train, which surprised me. Also, while it’s obvious that something to Chicago by truck will go via 70 and something to Albuquerque by truck will go down the Central Valley and across 40, when you get into grey areas in the south, lower midwest and southern Atlantic seaboard, and when you factor in not knowing about rail vs. road routing, it leaves us looking at myriad weather possibilities and not shipping one week because it’s too warm in Bakersfield and not the next because it’s too cold in the Rockies.
I’d love to hear what kind of answers / info you’ve got on their train vs. truck routing 
Hi Josh. I’ve also had trouble getting exact information from UPS. (Our shipper deals almost exclusively with UPS.) I was told that ground shipments across the country from California make most of the journey via rail. Whether that is true, it’s hard to say. The biggest problem with ground is that there are no guarantees. I was told, and this I believe, is that shipments do continue moving as much as possible until they reach the final hub. There isn’t a “oh, it’s Saturday and the shipment to Florida has only made it to Dallas, park the truck” moment. The exception is over observed holidays. (UPS’s list of observed versus recognized holidays in the US can be found here.)
Here’s what usually happens with our shipper, WW Shipping Solutions, which does quite a bit of fulfillment in the Valley. UPS picks up from them late in the afternoon and transfers it to their depot in San Pablo (on the Bay, very cool weather). The next AM, the shipment heads east. We found that shipments to the East Coast that left WWSS on Monday were arriving at the destination hub on Friday, too late for Friday delivery. However, if we ship on a Wednesday, the shipments were arriving at the hub on Monday or Tuesday and being delivered the following day. The difference, especially during the Spring shipping window, is not a big deal for many locales, but I was worried about the wine being at the terminus hub over the weekend in extreme weather locales like Florida and Texas.
The challenge is it is a big risk to depend on third party shippers to ship exactly when you ask them to. They “try,” but imperfectly. Therefore, I time my shipping orders myself, hopefully accurately guestimating the weather enroute using a tool like the Interstate forecast on Weather.com.
Time wise, Weds → Weds is the same as Fri → Fri, and as I’ve said we’ve not seen Weds → Tues though perhaps we just haven’t noticed it?
That is the big challenge, particularly to FL.
We do it in house to control it as much as possible. Not necessarily fun but we can micromanage shipping…
Josh
I rarely order from a retail store on the west coast but when I do, I order midweek with the rationale that I’d rather the wine be in a moving truck or rail car over the weekend than sitting in small truck at the hub. I think the risk of temperature damage is lower on large moving trailer than on a small, stationary delivery truck.
I have a case that left Anaheim today at 12:46 am via Fedex. I will be curious if there will be intermediate tracking checkpoints, which to me might indicate a partial rail shipment but I’d guess it goes by truck and gets to the east coast on Monday (with no intermidiate check points) and delivered Tuesday.