Ask HN: How are the UPS/fedex tracking systems architected?

13 points by jhferris3 15 years ago | 8 comments

I imagine they place a high priority on not losing tracking data, and I've never seen a tracking history 'revert' (updates that were there before disappear temporarilty), but there is sometimes a lag between an update and when you can see it through their website.

Anyone have any insight/experience with the internals? Just curious.

nathanstitt 15 years ago |

Funny you should ask.

Our IT guys just screwed up both UPS & Fedex's systems here at work just last week. I'm a programmer at a distribution company, and had a front row seat to the mess.

We had a power surge that fried two of our shipping stations, and the last backup was about a week old. Since all the stations are identical, they cloned the hard drive from one station and put the image onto the two replacement stations, thereby getting them up and running quickly.

The imaged system and the replacements then started generating identical tracking numbers. While the packages arrived correctly (the address is encoded into the barcode), the tracking information was garbage on the both companies websites. It would show packages jumping from California to Georgia in a matter of minutes for instance. Packages were delivered multiple times, etc. No major harm was done, but customer's who were attempting to track their packages were very confused.

Not sure what you can gleam from this, but at the very least it's obvious that neither company treats the tracking number as unique, and they don't use them for anything of importance internally.

yarone 15 years ago |

Also: I am interested in knowing if there is a way to do a "reverse lookup" on UPS / FedEx / USPS. For instance, I want to know: what packages are pending delivery to "1234 Main St. Anyplace, CA 91234". I think this would be extremely useful.

quartz 15 years ago | |

FedEx supports this functionality through their InSight service, but only for packages inbound to a verified address.

You can't just look at anyone's incoming packages. That would be like walking into a post office and asking if anyone is receiving a flat-screen TV on your block this week.

yarone 15 years ago | | |

Do you happen to know what process they use to verify an address?

xtac 15 years ago | |

That would never happen. Huge security concerns.

yarone 15 years ago | | |

Hmm... Sounds like an opportunity to me. No way to verify identity in such a way to make this possible?

barlo 15 years ago | |

I think they have a facility available like this for their larger customers to ease receiving. You'd probably need to have a decent sized account before they would give you access to something like this, and it would only be for addresses you have registered with them, not a random lookup of any address.

kin 15 years ago |

What I would like is tracking information that can estimate a better window of delivery.

For example, I am currently receiving a TV from UPS. I have to be at home to sign it. But, I have work. I'm not going to take an entire day off. But, the delivery window is an entire day. Surely, the trucks have some sort of route and surely the trucks should have some sort of GPS. I don't need to know exactly where it's at, but c'mon at LEAST a 2 hour ballpark.