aroma
Luva Sweet Easy Retrohale
About a week ago, we were in the middle of a heat wave here on the East Coast, and I was thinking about ordering some cigars from Florida and wondering what temperatures they might experience during shipment. I did a little googling, but couldn't come up with anything interesting.
As I sat there in front of my computer, I said to myself, "Self, you have a nifty high-precision temperature logger; why don't you just put it into a box and ship it to your buddy in Florida and back and see what temps it actually experiences?"
So I did (thanks, swingerofbirches!), and here are the results:
[EDIT: I neglected to mention that the carrier was USPS (Priority Mail)]
The temperature was in a 28-degree range, with a maximum of 101.3 - better than I was expecting.
Of course, this is not enough to be statistically significant, but it does suggest that the temps a package experiences are pretty comparable to the ambient temps in the areas through which it travels. I'd had visions of the temps inside a parked car on a hot, sunny day (like 140F), but, now that I think about it, an opaque, moving vehicle would have none of that green-house effect and would have the equivalent of a very strong wind, tending to move it toward temperature equilibrium with the surrounding air.
I will say that I've had lots of cigars shipped to me in the middle of summer and have not been able to correlate that with any problems smoking the sticks (I always rest cigars at least a month after shipping, and, most of the time, a year or more). Also, look at the graph and imagine the line going all the way down to zero. That's what happens when you freeze your sticks (which I highly recommend), and, in comparison, the temp swings during shipping look like small potatoes.
Maybe some of you have worked in shipping or trucking and can give us some more insight into this?
This brought to mind a similar experiment I'd read about, where people shipped a three-axis accelerometer, to measure shock, and some quick googling turned it up here. If you don't have time to click through that link, suffice it to say that you should expect any package you ship to be dropped multiple times.
One amusing (and disgusting) thing my googling turned up is the gazillion youtube videos of carriers abusing packages. For your entertainment, here a few: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1mhz1-biEY"]FedEx Ground[/ame], [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw-zxJI1YOo&feature=related"]FedEx Ground[/ame], [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB686oOET4k&feature=related"]UPS[/ame], [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgAq_KnDIPc&feature=related"]UPS[/ame].
As I sat there in front of my computer, I said to myself, "Self, you have a nifty high-precision temperature logger; why don't you just put it into a box and ship it to your buddy in Florida and back and see what temps it actually experiences?"
So I did (thanks, swingerofbirches!), and here are the results:
[EDIT: I neglected to mention that the carrier was USPS (Priority Mail)]
The temperature was in a 28-degree range, with a maximum of 101.3 - better than I was expecting.
Of course, this is not enough to be statistically significant, but it does suggest that the temps a package experiences are pretty comparable to the ambient temps in the areas through which it travels. I'd had visions of the temps inside a parked car on a hot, sunny day (like 140F), but, now that I think about it, an opaque, moving vehicle would have none of that green-house effect and would have the equivalent of a very strong wind, tending to move it toward temperature equilibrium with the surrounding air.
I will say that I've had lots of cigars shipped to me in the middle of summer and have not been able to correlate that with any problems smoking the sticks (I always rest cigars at least a month after shipping, and, most of the time, a year or more). Also, look at the graph and imagine the line going all the way down to zero. That's what happens when you freeze your sticks (which I highly recommend), and, in comparison, the temp swings during shipping look like small potatoes.
Maybe some of you have worked in shipping or trucking and can give us some more insight into this?
This brought to mind a similar experiment I'd read about, where people shipped a three-axis accelerometer, to measure shock, and some quick googling turned it up here. If you don't have time to click through that link, suffice it to say that you should expect any package you ship to be dropped multiple times.
One amusing (and disgusting) thing my googling turned up is the gazillion youtube videos of carriers abusing packages. For your entertainment, here a few: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1mhz1-biEY"]FedEx Ground[/ame], [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw-zxJI1YOo&feature=related"]FedEx Ground[/ame], [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB686oOET4k&feature=related"]UPS[/ame], [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgAq_KnDIPc&feature=related"]UPS[/ame].
Last edited:
