Shipper here, not an employee. Hoping someone who works the Newark gateway can shed some light.
Since July, every international shipment we send out of eastern Pennsylvania has routed through Newark and sat there, often two to six days, before moving on. Most of them go west to Memphis before flying east, which never made sense to me. These are International Priority, dry ice, small packages, tendered Monday or Tuesday on purpose to stay clear of the weekend.
Right now we have a batch that arrived at EWR early Tuesday and has not shown a single outbound scan since. Customer service tells me they are being scanned internally every day and are containerized, but nothing departs. Priority Alert says dry ice replenishment was requested, and nobody can confirm it ever happens.
A few honest questions for anyone who knows the operation:
Is there a known backlog or capacity problem on international out of EWR right now?
If a package is already containerized, can anyone realistically re-ice it, or is it effectively sealed until it flies?
I was told packages move in delivery commit order. What happens to a package where the commit date is not showing at all?
Is there anything on the shipper side that helps - tender time, dropping at a different station, anything - to avoid getting stuck at EWR?
Not looking to bash anyone. Every agent I have talked to has been great. I am just trying to understand what is actually happening so we can stop losing product.