Inside Newegg: They give us a Tour and you a Prize
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 14, 2006 3:31 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Packing your Order and the Peanut Gun
With your order now complete, your tub heads down this high speed rolling conveyer but you will note that the conveyer has a row of metal links on the right side. The purpose of these links is to push your tub into the appropriate ramp for boxing when the system tells it that one is free. The picture below shows the metal links in action:
After your tub is sent down the ramp, everything is removed from the tub, scanned and compared against your order. Newegg's system will not print a shipping label unless the items in your tub match the items you ordered. With everything scanned and your label printed your items are boxed and then sent off to the peanut gun.
The peanut gun is by far one of the coolest things in Newegg's warehouse, and it's exactly what you'd expect. An enormous vat of packaging peanuts is hung from the ceiling of the warehouse (pictured above) and individual guns dangle from it like cow udders (pretty picture):
The peanut gun itself is pretty simple; you aim, squeeze the trigger and peanuts come out:
With your valuables bubble wrapped and the box filled with peanuts, it's handed off to the automatic taping machine. That's right, you hold the box shut and feed it into the machine that takes over and tapes it shut.
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jims23211 - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
As a FedEx employee, the info that NewEgg supplied you about a price hike was bogus. Fact is NewEgg received a substantial discount, but UPS decided to undercut FedEx, so NewEgg renegoitated their contract on a less volume. Last I heard from our Corporate Sales rep, Newegg finally realized their mistake (a huge amount of damage returns and missed/lost deliveries by UPS) and is trying to get their deal back with FedEx, good luck...Jim
NullSubroutine - Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - link
aww poor fed ex, do they want a sucker? im sure its not just one sided to fex being innocent.yacoub - Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - link
Considering FedEx is the better shipper to use most of the time...hergieburbur - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
I agree, I have shopped Newegg for years, and I never once had any problem receiving my order extremely quickly until they switched to UPS. First time I ordered that was sent UPS took 2-3 days more, held up by shipping. Personally, I miss Fedex Ground.overclockingoodness - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
I'm guessing that's based on Newegg's dealings with UPS. A shipping company better be competent if it wants to handle 25K orders a day. I guess Newegg has created a benchmark for making sure shipping companies are doing their job well (so has Amazon.com).jfunk - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
I've always loved Newegg since the beginning. Almost always within a couple bucks of the cheapest price and service has been great the few times I've had to contact them.I just hope not too many of my shipments start comming out of the new TN warehouse, it takes longer to get to me than the stuff from NJ.
overclockingoodness - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
Yes, that's Anand in the picture. :)AndrewChang - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
Hey Anand, that wouldn't happen to be you by any chance would it? Haha, Goodstuff...PClark99 - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
the link to enter the contest is not working for me.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
Leave the contest link broken! All the n00bs won't be able to figure out how to re-construct the correct URL and won't be able to enter! More chances for the rest of us.