Efficiency and Logistics in South Korea

I grew up South Korea until I was 9 years old and also I went back for a year in year 2004 and boy South Korea probably has one of the best efficient logistics in the world.

South Korea is about 2/3 size of the State of California. Compared to the UPS/FedEx 1-day service we get here, since labor is much cheaper in Korea, they can ship good within literally matter of hours.

Especially if you live in Seoul, the capital, you can expect to go shopping at the mall and have your goods bought shipped within 30 minutes using Quick Delivery Service(퀵서비스), which is a form of delivery using motorcycles.

They have a similar service to eBay, an auction site. Well, before I came back to the States, I sold literally everything I owned in South Korea with that auction service. Average delivery time for most goods? No more than 2 hours and in return I got my money transferred straight to my bank account within minutes of the buyer receiving my goods.

Of course, the cost of labor in the U.S. makes efficient logistics like that nearly impossible and also the high-cost of insurance makes motorcycle delivery even more so.

quick-service

(Image Credit)

One thing apart from lower cost of labor, one thing I see that we could be doing in the U.S. is the fact that there’s literally thousands of different delivery companies in South Korea, meaning they are all competing for your business.

For you to ship something from Seoul to Pusan (which is about 6 hours drive, about the distance from San Francisco to Los Angeles), it costs you almost nothing, maybe $2-3.

In the meanwhile, in the U.S., UPS and FedEx has monopolized logistics in a way. I know there’s some other small companies who deliver locally but they are too, more expensive than the national delivery companies.

So what?

I am just saying, UPS (pronounced “OOPs” if they miss your package) and FedEx could do a little better here if they had more competition. There’s clearly more ground to cover for packages going over multiple States but clearly, there’s no reason why UPS and FedEx cannot do same day shipping for in-state deliveries. Even if they did already, we shouldn’t have to pay more for that.

I just wish we could somehow push UPS and FedEx to come up with new innovative ways to ship goods like their tracking systems. Recently, I’ve noticed nothing new from them other than sitting on their vans and collecting money. - Keep innovating, never stop, you can never be the best in the world.

Well, just sayin’, we don’t have the most efficient “local” logistics in the world, it could be a LOT better and cheaper, even with high labor costs.