Glittering Nantucket residents will face major inconvenience this summer after the island’s chief courier forgot to reserve seats on a sold-out ferry.
Locals and visitors planning to spend part of the busy summer season on the affluent island of Massachusetts are faced with the challenge of doing so without shipping from UPS. It comes after the delivery giant’s bumbling bosses ignored a routine advance offer to reserve seats for its trucks on Nantucket’s Steam Authority ferries.
High-end stores on the WASP-filled island, which is 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, are now facing shelves devoid of the designer merchandise typically snapped up by vacationers.
Visitors and residents of Nantucket have also been warned that they are much less likely to have items they order online delivered, with UPS acting as Amazon’s primary courier on the island.
Resident William D. Cohen believes the persistence of well-connected residents, including Secretary of State John Kerry and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, will eventually solve the problem.
The writer told the Boston Globe: “In Nantucket, if you make enough noise, they can handle it. The summer guys will have to get their outfits from the tweet they ordered from Hermès online.”
But the Steam Authority says their ability to lay down additional boats is limited by the number of vessels they operate, as well as the level of staffing, meaning there is no obvious or easy solution to this mess.
UPS will not deliver goods to Nantucket after it refused to request its truck reservation from the Steam Authority, one of the island’s main carriers, via boat.
According to Globe, the error appears to be the result of an oversight on the part of UPS.
Last fall, Steam sent out its usual pre-notification to courier companies, offering them a first turn-off for bookings on their ships to and from the island.
They did this long before the opening to the general public of summer seasonal ferry slots, which are released in January for trips from May to October.
UPS didn’t respond and also ignored the response from the Steam Authority until someone finally figured out what was going on and sent a panicked response, by which time it was too late.
Nantucket (pictured) is likely to run out of supplies during the summer, when city dwellers usually come on vacation, if the problem is not addressed.
UPS is the largest standard shipping carrier for the wealthy island community and typically applies for ferries months in advance along with other shippers. Many Nantucket stores rely on it to source clothes, televisions, hardware, and other items they sell to residents and vacationers.
“This will bring us a lot of pain,” Chanteau Bloise, business manager of the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce, told The Globe.
“I can’t imagine how we can function on just DHL, FedEx and the Postal Service,” she added.
Nantucket is located 30 miles (48 km) from the coast of Cape Code and 121 miles from Boston. Travelers can take a leisurely two-hour and 15-minute boat ride on one of the Steamship Authority ferries from Hyannis to Nantucket.
According to James Malkin, board member of the Shipping Authority, which operates ferries to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, after missing the priority booking window, UPS struggled to find all the available places for its trucks.
“But they don’t have what they need,” Malkin told The Globe.
“This will bring us a lot of pain,” Shanto Bloise, business manager of the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce, told The Boston Globe.
Many of the island’s wealthy retailers will have to rely on other carriers to import their private delivery orders unless UPS and the Shipping Authority resolve the issue no later than May.
Stephanie Correia and her Stephanie’s Nantucket, a popular gift shop that sells glassware, bags and purses.
Stephanie Correia said she relies on UPS to deliver merchandise for her Main Street store, Stephanie’s, which sells clothing and homewares. The service is crucial in the summer, when her business generates 75 percent of annual profits, she says.
“This is a lifeline for businesses, for homeowners, for Amazon,” she said.
Some other shop owners are looking for other ways to get their goods to the island. But some businesses and residents have said they believe the problem will be resolved.
“They usually let another ship in if there is a disruption to the schedule,” said Vanessa Moore, who works as a customer service representative for Nantucket Housefitters.
However, the ferry service said that there may not be an opportunity to increase the number of flights.
“Right now we are at the maximum number of routes in terms of the number of boats and crew members,” said Sean Driscoll, a spokesman for the authorities. “Maybe we will add a couple of trips back and forth, but not on some systemic basis.”
“There is no secret tunnel for shippers,” he added.
UPS is the largest U.S. package carrier, but is in danger of losing Nantucket to competing couriers that also deliver to the island, such as FedEx.
One of the problems is that since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the number of people permanently residing on the island has increased, and they prefer tourism over cargo transportation. Vacation home rental prices are also on the rise as city dwellers want to work remotely from the island.
“Orders for this year exceed any previous year by a significant percentage,” Malkin said. According to the National Association of Realtors, Nantucket regularly ranks among the most expensive counties in the United States for a vacation home.
UPS said it would have no problem delivering to Martha’s Vineyard, which is 37 miles or two and a half hours by ferry from Nantucket, although both islands typically order shipments in the same form.
Retailers and local residents are expected to be the hardest hit by UPS outages if the issue is not resolved by May.
Nantucket Cottage Hospital, the island’s only hospital, relies on FedEx to deliver supplies. While other carriers usually deliver food, fuel and large quantities.