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Comment by nine_zeros | Hacker News Reader

> In the real world it takes weeks if not months to purchase a delivery vehicle.

But you are looking at it from the perspective of someone sitting behind a keyboard, starting from scratch.

In the real world with thriving economies, there will be smaller, underdog players already operating. Maybe they are regional, or maybe they have a slower/smaller fleet.

Whatever the reason, these smaller players rise up to eat the big one because they already have something to leverage. Facilities, workers etc. They just need to raise capital to expand rapidly.

The steps in the parent post are not meant for someone starting from scratch.

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There are regional parcel carriers. Two of the largest just merged (OnTrac and LaserShip).

Neither of them, nor the combined, has the assets (physical vehicles/aircraft, drivers, pilots, package handlers, terminals/hubs) to take over a substantial fraction of UPS volume on a few days’ notice. And they won’t scale up ahead of obvious opportunity because if UPS settles, they’ve got a ton of previous capital stranded and employees to fire with no associated business to pay for them.

The original post bemoaned the fact that the economy has become too concentrated to a handful of companies and is too protective of large corporations.

I took this to mean that capitalism would better work as intended if UPS was not allowed to grow to be as big as they are. They would then be a regional player themselves, one of many, and it would be easier for one or more other similarly sized companies to take over their business if they drop the ball. There would be a real competitive market.

The scenario you mentioned is the current state of affairs, where such a large company cannot be replaced, and can hold the economy hostage.

>In the real world with thriving economies, there will be smaller, underdog players already operating. Maybe they are regional, or maybe they have a slower/smaller fleet.

Yes. I use them every day. I send million of dollars of aerospace equipment to and fro every year using 3PL, none of which are UPS or FedEx or the USPS.

There are thousands of 3PL firms, each competing with each other.

If you search "full truck" and/or "intermodal" and "logistics" I guarangoddamntee there are a dozen within 50 miles of your zip code.

> They just need to raise capital to expand rapidly.

LOL

If my preferred smaller logistics firm (Polaris) was given eleventy-billion hexaseptillion dollars it would take two years at a minimum just to lease the aircraft, airport slots, and facilities needed to compete with a single-digit percentage of UPS's network.

Again, the fact that people think that smaller underdog competitors to UPS don't exist is a glaring, supermassive-black-hole-sized blind spot that pseudo-capitalists have.

Once again, your understanding of this is based on single anecdotal experiences.

In a thriving economy, there will be multiple underdogs, all competing for different segments of the market. Each one of them will eat market share - which will lead to UPS losing some customers at first. Then, if they can keep nibbling at the market share until they keep acquiring more customers.

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