Every year when the holidays roll around, millions, if not billions, of cookies take flight, surging from one coast to the next. They hop in trucks and cruise down Main Street in search of their family and friends. Now of course, these roving cookies have the help of the bakers who lovingly send their family members a taste of holidays that those family members are missing elsewhere. Those cookies might be received begrudgingly by the son of a mother who is trying give him a guilt trip for not coming home for Christmas, or maybe by a smiling daughter who has missed home desperately. But the worst cases are when these cookies are missed because they arrive with a signature required but no signer to oblige—leading to spoilage. Here is where opportunity for innovation in shipping has arisen, and is knocking at the door—much like an unheard UPS or FedEx delivery person!

Innovations in shipping are too slow in coming. UPS, FedEx and the USPS all lack the faculties to defer shipped items that require a signature so that the intended receiver can intercept a package and sign for it if he or she is not home. Many people have suggested that it would be convenient, albeit out of the way, for one of these shipping giants to accept packages to hold at a warehouse for the recipient to come and pick them up. It is understandable why UPS or FedEx would balk at the idea. One can easily foresee whole warehouses full of packages that should have been picked up but were not because the receiver was not interested in getting what was sent.

Still, the dilemma is clear, and it gives rise to great opportunities for anyone who could devise an innovation in shipping methods that currently stand. GPS tracking devices might serve well in alerting a recipient as to a package’s location, so he could intercept it without having to clear hours out of his day to wait at home. Even a simple SMS message could update someone that they have a signature-only box, en route to their home. Sadly, as it stands, there is no clear way to get around the shipping dinosaur known as the “signaturesaurus.”