Views from the Road: The Uniroyal Tire

Metro Delivery loves the Big Tire on I-94 between Detroit Metropolitan Airport and Dearborn- although it’s enough to make even our biggest vehicles suffer from feelings of inadequacy.

photo by Christian

Everybody around Detroit knows this, but that giant tire used to be a Ferris wheel at the 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair. Once the fair ended, it was shipped by rail to Allen Park to loom ominously over the freeway.

When you get up close, it’s not unusual to discover a few arrows sticking out of the sidewall, here and there; that would be some bowhuntin’ Michigan wiseacre trying to cause the world’s biggest blowout.

Penguin News: New Penguins at the Detroit Zoo

Presto, official penguin & mascot of Metro Delivery, would like to take this opportunity to welcome the new penguins in town, recently arrived from the defunct seabird exhibit at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and currently chilling around 11 mile and Woodward.

Presto would like to assure the rockhoppers that they’ll find the Detroit Metro area to be a rockin’, hoppin’ and totally cool place to perch, and speaking of perch, he knows a terrific delivery company to deliver cratefuls of fish, if anyone’s feeling peckish after the long waddle from the West.

Metro Delivery Receives Toys for Tots Award 2011

The Staff of Metro Delivery were honored with an award, and a handsome wall plaque, by Tony Gillum, Program Coordinator for Toys for Tots, who came personally and in full uniform to our warehouse to thank us for our assistance in turning truckloads of toys into Happy Holidays for over 600 local children.

Metro donates trucks and drivers to Toys for Tots, and all of us here are thrilled to be a part of the good works they do. Thanks, Tony!

Rare Metro Delivery Footage

Metro Delivery caught by concealed camera! We’ve been seeing a lot of shocking “Candid Camera”-type videos of other delivery companies on the interwebs recently, so we decided to set up some surreptitious surveillance on a delivery by Metro; but we did not expect to see THIS.

Metro Delivery Caught by Hidden Camera from Metro Delivery on Vimeo.

Scenes from a Very Metro Holiday Season

…it all started when we spotted the above elf in the warehouse.

…the next thing we know, people are wearing penguins on their heads.

Throngs of gift baskets and boxes multiply and spread throughout our normally spacious and tidy warehouse and into the conference room.

…there’s still eight shopping days left ’til Christmas, and we’ve already delivered literally hundreds of gift baskets and boxes for local companies & merchants.

We love the gift basket business! Messengers always appreciate the opportunity to be the bearers of good news & glad tidings.

Serendipitously, the above splendid, abandoned Santa Claus was found by the side of the road, issued a shiny new lightbulb, and put to work illuminating our holiday operations.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE STAFF HERE AT METRO!

Toys for Tots Drive 2011!

Click here for Washtenaw County Toys for Tots Donation Centers!

Metro Delivery again this year donates all services to the good folks at Toys for Tots, carrying truckloads of toys hither and yon across Southeastern Michigan, for distribution to disadvantaged children in the area.

Our friends at W4 Country are sponsoring a Toy Drive, for Toys for Tots, with LIVE RADIO COVERAGE:

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday
December 15th-19th
Key Banks Crusade for Kids/Toys for Tots
Kroger on Maple Rd in Ann Arbor
All W4 Country Shows Are Live
6am-7pm Thursday, Friday and Monday
10-7 Saturday
12-7 Sunday
Please drop off new, unwrapped toys.

Metro Delivery: Victim of Internet Penguin Larceny

Presto the Penguin, beloved mascot of Metro Delivery, was briefly kidnapped and taken across state lines for nefarious purposes!

Here’s the background: for years, we’ve been fielding the occasional phone call from people around the State of Arizona, regarding a notice of failed delivery left on their door by a “Metro Delivery.”

They reach us because we’re the at the top of the Google Searches for Metro Delivery. We always tell those people that we operate out of Michigan, and it must be another, unaffiliated “Metro Delivery” that they’re looking for.

We don’t operate in Arizona, though we’re licensed for deliveries there if called upon to do so. And that is also what we told the Arizona Attorney General’s Office when they started calling up regarding complaints they’d received about this other “Metro Delivery.” -it’s not us, Arizona Attorney General.

Arizona’s a long way from Michigan, so we paid all of this little mind.

Then two weeks ago we were Googling ourselves, the way internet-savvy businesses do nowadays, and we discover that this other “Metro Delivery” has set up a clumsy, amateurish website, (metrodeliveryDOTorg as opposed to our legitimate metrodelivery.com)- and look! It features our own logo from the photos on our facebook page, with the stylish “METRO” logo designed by Graphic Artist Judy Stopke, and Presto the Penguin as rendered by Sebastian, our Business Development Manager.

Here’s a screenshot of their technologically-impaired site, featuring our Purloined Penguin posed ironically next to the phrase: ” Metro Delivery Practices High Ethical and Professional Practices.”

OK, now they had our undivided attention.

Other highlights from their website:

• There’s no mailing or physical address listed for their business, there’s no phone number listed for their business,  just a couple blocky email contact forms, which is a heck of a way to run a delivery business.
• They don’t know how to spell “Perishable.”
• Their company slogan: “Where Affordability and Great Customer Service Goes Hand-in Hand” would be awkward even if the grammar wasn’t wrong.
• The website is registered under what appears to be a false phone number, which belongs to a cosmetics representative in Massachusetts, or something.

And we looked around on the internet and we found this thread, which provides much speculation about the activity of these jokers.  Sheesh.  Honestly, we don’t want to know.

On the advice of our attorney, we sent them this  message through their blocky email forms:

“Hi There! We’re Metro Delivery of Ann Arbor Michigan. Kindly immediately cease and desist use of our proprietary logo featuring the penguin, which you took from our legitimate Metro Delivery Facebook page for use on your extremely suspicious .org website.”

…and within 24 hours our penguin was released, replaced by a small map of Arizona and the catchy phrase: “Ve Service the Entire Sta”.

…So apparently they got the message.

We hope this blog entry serves as an official notice that we here at Metro Delivery of Ann Arbor not only are completely unaffiliated with the alleged Metro Delivery of Arizona, but further, that we view their activities with disapproval and extreme suspicion. There’s something pretty sneaky going on there in the Sunshine State.

Thankfully, now, Presto the Penguin is safely back here at our offices in Michigan, enjoying a nice warm cup of herring soup and recovering from this harrowing experience. What kind of people would take a poor little penguin to Arizona, of all places, anyway?

HAPPY HOLIDAYS from Metro Delivery

Select Metro Vehicles are fitted with FESTIVE WREATHS for the season.

Prepare for Bridgageddon

The good news is, starting right after Thanksgiving Weekend, They’ll finally be doing much-needed construction on the Ol’ Stadium Boulevard Bridges that are crumbling over State Street and the railroad between Main Street and South Industrial.

The bad news is, there’s no good alternate route through that area.

The bad news is also that the route will be closed for just under a year, because it’s just that much construction.

For more information and suggested (though not good) alternate routes, here’s the project website.

Those bridges have been standing there since 1928,and evidently they’ve had it UP TO HERE with the traffic, already.

October’s Raffle Winner!

“Rockin’ Robbie” of Romulus was the winner of Metro Delivery’s Trivia Contest in October, correctly answering the question: “Where is the world’s largest limestone quarry?”
with the correct answer of “Rogers City, Michigan.”

A $50 Busch’s Gift Card was hand-delivered by an Actual Metro Delivery Driver, to commemorate the event.

Congratulations, Robbie, and keep on Rockin’!
It’s kind of like a do-it-yourself Grand Canyon.