Oh McMaster... how I love thee. They pioneered same day delivery in 2001.
I worked at Idealab in Pasadena California. We ordered SO much from them that they would deliver to us (and others in the area) directly and daily. If you had your order in by 10am (11 if you were SUPER lucky and there were a lot of orders to process) the truck would show up at ~2ish. This was 2001... WAY before Amazon Prime 2 day deliver, let alone same day. It was EPIC to design something and have the parts show up hours later.
The other beauty of McMaster is the breadth of their inventory. You could order a safety vest, a billet of Al, a 4x8 sheet of plywood and some screws... all from the same place! One of the software engineers cooked up a web scraper tied to a randomization engine. It would randomly order $100 worth of things on our account each day. He was stopped before it was turned on... but it would have been really fun to see what random stuff showed up on a daily basis. We spent a few lunches laughing about the potential boxes that would have shown up.
I used to do a lot of metalwork/fabrication in the early 2000s and ordered from them frequently. Even as a no-name so-and-so, stuff would be delivered same day or next day at the latest. It was amazing and they still do it!
I worked at Idealab in Pasadena California. We ordered SO much from them that they would deliver to us (and others in the area) directly and daily. If you had your order in by 10am (11 if you were SUPER lucky and there were a lot of orders to process) the truck would show up at ~2ish. This was 2001... WAY before Amazon Prime 2 day deliver, let alone same day. It was EPIC to design something and have the parts show up hours later.
The other beauty of McMaster is the breadth of their inventory. You could order a safety vest, a billet of Al, a 4x8 sheet of plywood and some screws... all from the same place! One of the software engineers cooked up a web scraper tied to a randomization engine. It would randomly order $100 worth of things on our account each day. He was stopped before it was turned on... but it would have been really fun to see what random stuff showed up on a daily basis. We spent a few lunches laughing about the potential boxes that would have shown up.