Safecutters

In today’s globalized environment, shipping & receiving has never been more crucial—or more complex. With Americans buying goods from, and selling goods to, the rest of the world, high-quality shipping receiving professionals are among the most important links in the shipping supplies chain. The numbers tell the story: the US Post office handles over a billion packages a year, representing more than three billion pounds’ worth of goods. FedEx delivers over six million every day, while, in the same twenty-four hours, UPS delivers a whopping 15.6 million.

Long before you click that “Buy” icon on your Web browser, a distribution center must order its stock from the manufacturer’s warehouse, where a shipping clerk must correctly log the request. Packers must find the ordered materials and package them safely for the series of long journeys ahead. Then the shipping supplies must reach the distribution center, where, when it arrives, a receiving clerk must make a note of its arrival, unpack it, and safely store it. Then, finally, when you place your order, someone has to find the materials in the distribution center’s warehouse, at which time they’re packed up once again, and yet another shipping supplies clerk makes sure that they’re sent to the right place, with the right bill, to the right person.

Now multiply all that effort by thousands, and you’ll have some idea of the difficulty involved in shipping & receiving. And let’s not even talk about returns! The shipping receiving department of today is so central—and so representative of the complexity of modern, globalized business—that one suspects if Adam Smith were writing The Wealth of Nations today, he might well replace his famous pin-factory example with the shipping and receiving department of a modern corporation.

In such an environment, old-fashioned care and intelligence make all the difference. The mail room must keep meticulous records, noting whether payment has been received from the customer, whether and when orders have been sent, and logging customer complaints when mistakes do occur. Every step in an item’s journey from the manufacturer’s assembly line to your door must be recorded. It’s shipping receiving workers who keep the records that enable retailers to know which items move quickly vs. which items collect dust in a warehouse. And it’s shipping & receiving workers who tell you when your item has shipped and how long it’ll take to reach you.

In recent years, methods of handling materials in shipping receiving have changed significantly. The adoption of equipment such as automatic sorting systems, robots, computer-directed trucks, and programmed data storage and retrieval systems has created largely automated operations. This automation, coupled with the use of hand-held barcode and RFID scanners has increased the productivity of shipping receiving and traffic clerks.