I ordered something that was shipped from Spokane, WA to near Twin Falls, ID. That's about 500 miles. First, they took it to Ontario, CA. That's 1200 miles and the shortest US highway route is right by my house. They probably stayed on the freeways which is considerably farther.
From Ontario, they would normally send it to Boise or Salt Lake. Nope. It next touched down in Billings, MT. That's 1100 miles north and getting farther away. The tracking went dark for 2 days, then they mysteriously showed it in Boise. After a day there, the tracking now shows 'delivery delayed'. No kidding. If it's actually in Boise, I should get it tomorrow. Good thing it's nothing I need badly and not very expensive.

I am beginning to think the people who program UPS, Fedex and USPS logistics programs are the same people that wrote the logic for the Navigation system on my Toyota Highland. Seems they want to go the longest, slowest route possible.

It's been my experience that which shipping option the sender chooses to ship by can make a big difference in how long a parcel takes to arrive at receiver destination -- the cheaper the shipping option, the longer it takes to arrive at destination. UPS still offers their 'budget' shipping option where they do the initial pickup and transport but at some point hand off to USPS for final delivery. When ever I see "Free Shipping" or very cheap shipping, it's usually a pretty safe bet that that is the shipping option the shipper will use. FedEx used to offer a similar hand-off to USPS 'budget' shipping option too but no longer do -- now they just use their own FedEx Ground.