As many of you are aware already GORUCK shut down their shipping warehouse that was located in Seattle. They decided that they were a gear company (not a logistics company) and are now using Newgistics to handle their warehousing and shipping.
I’m going to start off by saying that I understand why GORUCK made this decision. After each Charity Challenges event I’m stuck shipping between 700 – 1,000 packages with Kirk shipping the other half. That task alone takes us over twenty hours each. We kept saying our time would be better spent working on the Charity Challenges project instead of shipping packages. Each time we packed the patches we swore to each other it would be the last… that the next event we would outsource to a professional shipping company.
With that experience in my back pocket I can absolutely understand why GORUCK made the choice that they did. Shipping is not fun and you end up getting caught in details that are not furthering your brand or cause.
With that being said outsourcing your shipping can be scary because now someone else is in control of getting the gear to your customers. You have to be sure they hold the same values of you so that they won’t hurt your brand.
Old GORUCK Shipping Experience
My previous GORUCK shipping experiences were special. Not just because they were packed with extra love but because they showed up the day after shipping… always.
The old GORUCK warehouse was a short 20 mile drive south and if I ordered something between 2 PM PST there was a 75% chance it would be delivered the next day. Their shipments got to me quicker than my Amazon Prime deliveries… which says something.
While I was enjoying this sweet life of 1 day shipping luxury I know many people throughout our great country were experiencing something a bit different. Seattle is in the far northwest corner of our country and shipping to anywhere in the mid-west, east coast, south, south east… basically anywhere not named Oregon or California can take a long time. Centralizing their shipping operations does make a lot of sense in that regard and will probably help out more people than it hurts.
New GORUCK Shipping Experience
On 10/5/2016 at 2:36 PM PST I placed an order for a new GORUCK wind breaker, a MIL Kit Bag, and a 32L Kit Bag. The goal is to finally get a post together comparing the three different sizes of GORUCK kit bags.
At 6:52 PM on 10/5/2016 I received an email from Newgistics stating that my order had shipped. There wasn’t much info in the email except for an exceptionally long USPS tracking number.
A few days later an estimated delivery date appeared which ranged from six days to nine days after the date I ordered. It looks like the package is still in the hands of the Newgistics company and hasn’t been handed off to USPS just yet.
On October 8th Newgistics sent the tracking info to USPS and on the 12th the local USPS received the package. The USPS near me is always on their game and delivered it later that day.
Overall the shipping experience took one full week from when the order was placed to when it arrived. One week from placing the order to delivery really is not too terrible… especially considering the shipping was free. Have you had a recent experience with the GORUCK shipping partner? Leave a comment and let us know how it went.