brownsugar
Member
UPS is about to complete a billion $ expansion of worldport - so it is possible that RFD volume could be redirected to L'ville to fill up new capacity!
Any Hubs to Close?
- Thread starter g l
- Start date
thank you
This is really the only compelling reason that has been listed so far. The point I was trying to make, is why Rockford? I already listed a few reasons why it is more feasible that Denver or Philadelphia could be closed instead of Rockford. As others have pointed out, we have a brand new Air Cargo facility and they doubled our sorting capacity two years ago.
Maybe the writing is on the wall, but so far I havn't seen a compelling reason to keep Philadelphia or Hartford or Denver or Ontario open over the Rockford air hub. In fact, I believe the Ontario night sort only has like 5-10 flights... anyways, I digress. There is a chance they could close all the hubs down and redirect to Louisville if the economy doesn't turn around and volume doesn't pick up.
What I'm hearing here in Louisville from my friend who is a steward, who has gotten a lot of solid info in the past from a manager in our building, is that they are closing Rockford(partially?) and would like to close Philly.
kingOFchester
Well-Known Member
Heard at the Philly air hub, they are going to close a sort......hear say perhaps?
This is somewhat hard to understand: are you saying that the only thing that will be run on the twilight sort are the next day airs that need to go to Louisville? This would seem to make a lot of sense to me...
Thats correct it would run much like it did when the hub first opened where twi was just next day volume
SDF opened a 1 billion buck hub expansion. SDF can handle all the volume EXCEPT when weather hits and closes the hub for 3 days. RFD, CAE, PHL, DFW, ONT, MIA can be downgraded and all NDA can be sorted at Worldport. The economy is driving UPS back to 1986 when all the planes flew to SDF to NDA sort, then fly back to the gateways to be delivered. The gateways will have either a small SDA ops or the aircraft will sit until they are loaded to fly back to SDF at night.
Dman82
Member
That's why RFD is SDF's back up. RFD is the second largest UPS hub by Ramp size (PHL has us beat on sort facility size) in North America with 50 acres of ramp space with 40 Aircraft parking positions.
Besides, if they wanted planes to sit. They'd keep them at SDF since that's where the maintenance hangers are located. I don't think those mechanics would want work on aircraft outside in the middle of an IL winter.
Just Numbers
Retired
Maintenance hangers? How many gateways does UPS have and all mechanical work is performed outside no matter what the weather.
This is good to hear. Most likely they will probably only bring the DFW night sort back for peak, but I'm sure that closing Columbia and DFW was corporate's way of seeing how it impacts the other night sorts -- most particularly SDF. I think that if they reopen DFW, it could indicate that they plan on keeping at least a few of the other night sorts open once SDF's expansion is in full swing. Just because you can sort 500,000 pieces per hour doesn't mean that you want to always be sorting at that capacity -- then you're screwed for peak and have to open up other hubs temporarily (4 months out of the year). By running at max capacity and then opening up temp. hubs, you are going to have increased service failures and damages. Just my take on it -- maybe sounds too optimistic because I don't want my night hub to close, but I think it makes sense...comments?
Another thing to note: In Rockford they are begining to promote candidates for Part-time Supervisors...previously they have had a freeze all year. We have not hired a single person all year and are begining to hire. It would seem strange for corporate to allow us to promote PT Sups into the company -- we currently have plenty of PT Sup staffing to cover all areas, train new hires, and have a few extra to cover any additional areas that may open for peak -- only to have to lay them all in January. Just more food for thought, I suppose.
