How could anyone say preload is harder?

[jibbs]

You must work in a house then? 500-600 between two cars seems somewhat bad in a house and spliting belt.


What size cars you loading?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by loading in a house, but it's not off a boxline-- a conveyor belt that turns to rollers at the top of our belt/line, in what seems like a hastily put-together add-on to our center to allow room for a third belt. Thinking about the set-up, though, I can see why it would be called a "house," and, honest to God, it's called the doghouse in my center.

The trucks are big as hell. Large enough for me to be able to sequence the packages near perfectly without anything on the floor but irregs so long as I don't get hit hard all morning. I'll make sure to ask what kind of trucks they are tomorrow morning, but they're definitely two of the biggest three package cars on my belt.

I have between 500-600 on four trucks, split the belt, pull off the blanks, and pull off all of the sure post. On days like today when sure post comes in heavy along with the trucks being heavy it is hell staying caught up.

I couldn't do that with 4 trucks. Hell, if they add a third onto my two I'll probably feel dead every morning. Big respect on holding down that spot.

I'm confused. Am I reading this correctly? Some of you are loading 500-800 pieces? We are talking preload, right? Loading those brown delivery trucks?

Yezzir, preload shift loading those boxy brown trucks. Is this unusual to a lot of you? I don't know of any trucks on the preload in my center that regularly have less than 200 packages in them. There are a few tiny trailers that get hitched onto the back of certain trucks, though, and they don't get too bad most of the time... Unless you get the one that goes to Atlantic Cycle every gosh darn day. Tetris isn't hard, but it can be a pain when your pieces are all 6+ft long, weigh 45lbs+ and/or are huge tires.


But yeah, preload. ~4am-9am.

 

[ORLY!?!]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by loading in a house, but it's not off a boxline-- a conveyor belt that turns to rollers at the top of our belt/line, in what seems like a hastily put-together add-on to our center to allow room for a third belt. Thinking about the set-up, though, I can see why it would be called a "house," and, honest to God, it's called the doghouse in my center.

The trucks are big as hell. Large enough for me to be able to sequence the packages near perfectly without anything on the floor but irregs so long as I don't get hit hard all morning. I'll make sure to ask what kind of trucks they are tomorrow morning, but they're definitely two of the biggest three package cars on my belt.

Yep, your in a house. Ask your soup what they call your house. Theres a couple near us, two infact. One is PD7, which I was loading in for awhile, and the 3 / 4 of us slayed it. The other side is PD9, and its had problems ever since I've worked here. I've blessed it with the name PD911, because they are always calling for help.

In 7, I was loading 3 cars. It was a belt, onto a slide and onto rollers, just like yours. Yours is probably a feeder car made into door ways where package cars fit. They use those houses to take on extra volume in the building. Our building is too small for its volume during preload. Thus the houses are created to take pressure off of the boxline and other loading places.

 

[ORLY!?!]

That's pretty sweet. Last Friday I had 1223 pieces. Pretty unusual for my area- I haven't had numbers like that since peak. The only way I ever have below 800 is if by some miracle I only have two cars to load (like today).

What type of building are you in? Are you subjected to the elements? As in, is it an A/C / heated building? I believe we have chatted about this before.

What you should be complaining about, to your soup, is if you have a lot more then the people around you all the time. Like you getting 1223 pieces and the person next to you is getting 700 or less, each day. Your fulltime preload soup should be spreading things out equally person to person. It isnt fair to the be top dog in numbers, while everyone else is getting next to nothing.

 

[hdkappler]

I've been gone from brown for 10 years.they were always bitching about preload.and preload is always complaing.lets solve this promlem.you have 60 preload only keep 10.to unload the trailers.have the drivers start earlier and load there own trucks so it would stop misleads.save time on the street from sorting.plus get out of building in the morning.get loaded faster.oh the other 50 could get laid off.(go to mcdonalds and work for almost the same wage.or walmart.

 

[Macbrother]

What you should be complaining about, to your soup, is if you have a lot more then the people around you all the time. Like you getting 1223 pieces and the person next to you is getting 700 or less, each day. Your fulltime preload soup should be spreading things out equally person to person. It isnt fair to the be top dog in numbers, while everyone else is getting next to nothing.

lol, did you forget where you work? UPS always puts the most on people that work the hardest, secondary to that management is generally going to give people on their ****list the worst pulls. This has been grieved, by the way, and lost since mgmt "can't predict volume," wink wink.

At our center, we pull packages directly off the belt to load. ~700 piece count between 3-4 cars if you sort, ~1000 piece count between 4-5 cars at the back of the belt. Some spots routinely get 1100+ though. 2 cars is virtually unheard of, but I've seen it.

Regarding the thread title, I've worked most jobs on local sort/night shift;; with the exception of loading at the peak of the day (all the package cars are in, + trailer(s)), they don't compare to preload. You work much more at your own pace and the supervisors are much more relaxed and friendly. They even bought me gatorade and told me to take 5 on a handful of occasions before I move to my next task. Preload mostly consists of yelling and belt lashing.

 

[pensfan]

Yeah our building is one belt. You load from belt to car. No A/C(do any buildings have AC?). We do have heaters in my area but it has drop down to 35-40 degrees inside before they will cut on.

 

[TooTechie]

Yep. We are a small hub here. Run 18-20 routes a day out of our building with about half of those being rural routes. The other half small city routes.

Wow, only 20 routes in your whole center?

 

[pensfan]

Yep. I believe 21 or 22 counting the 2 feeder routes.

 

[Macbrother]

Yeah our building is one belt. You load from belt to car. No A/C(do any buildings have AC?). We do have heaters in my area but it has drop down to 35-40 degrees inside before they will cut on.

We don't have AC, but we have pretty large fans directly over the belt.. and since it's morning, honestly the heat isn't so bad, even where I'm at in the south. They do run the heat too when it gets cold enough. I will say heat is MUCH more of a factor on local sort; you open that trailer door and it's 110+ degrees inside, and you're at the very back with the fan (if it's even working) at the front, that's no joke.

Our center has 57 routes btw, only 50ish have been in lately.

 

[arice11]

Preload can b difficult. The sort aisle demands fast action and dealing with irregs at a nonstop pace. Unloading can take its toll on the body, but loading is slightly less harsh on the body. It all depends on how much is being put where.
I would not agree that preload is an easy job, unless u only load trucks instead of sorting, unloading or doing irregs at 3am b4 most the crew arrives

 

[Macbrother]

Preload can b difficult. The sort aisle demands fast action and dealing with irregs at a nonstop pace. Unloading can take its toll on the body, but loading is slightly less harsh on the body. It all depends on how much is being put where.
I would not agree that preload is an easy job, unless u only load trucks instead of sorting, unloading or doing irregs at 3am b4 most the crew arrives

You really think loading is easiest? In my center all the jobs in the back (unload, pickoff, spa, smalls, surepost, clerk) are done by the highest seniority people. Nobody wants to load. It might be slightly easier physically but you have the highest level of responsiblity; are the easiest target for mgmt and drivers, and you take the brunt end of everything unload shoves at you.

 

[you aint even know it]

You really think loading is easiest? In my center all the jobs in the back (unload, pickoff, spa, smalls, surepost, clerk) are done by the highest seniority people. Nobody wants to load. It might be slightly easier physically but you have the highest level of responsiblity; are the easiest target for mgmt and drivers, and you take the brunt end of everything unload shoves at you.

Are you kidding me? None of the loaders in my center want to unload! Even they admit that it's the hardest. I did unload many times before, and it is very easy. All packages are already in your power zone, and you just throw heavy packages on the ground - no stress. THERE IS NO JOB at UPS that's harder than unloading a trailer/truck. The amount of twisting and picking up heavy @ss packages from the ground and twisting and putting it on the metro is a killer. That's the only thing at UPS that I'm literally scared to do by myself - unloading a trailer, especially when it has heavy @ss irregs. Unloading is by far the hardest inside job. Nobody can tell me that any other inside job is harder than unloading. Imagine picking up twenty 70ibs small packages that's filled with screws and are on the ground - picking up all 20 of them is a killer.

 

[Macbrother]

We just had a guy who loaded for 4 years finally get his chance to go to the back and unload -- he took it immediately. He never again has to worry about misloads, damages, or getting wrapped. All he's gotta do is be on time. To each their own I guess.

 

[cynic]

We just had a guy who loaded for 4 years finally get his chance to go to the back and unload -- he took it immediately. He never again has to worry about misloads, damages, or getting wrapped. All he's gotta do is be on time. To each their own I guess.

Exactly why I love unload - it's like being paid to work out!

 

[uber]

Exactly why I love unload - it's like being paid to work out!

Did that for 5 and half years and it was great! Sucks making peanuts though.

 

[Box Ox]

Unload felt relatively soul crushing compared to load for me. Was by myself in dirty trailers dodging poorly built falling walls and lifting heavy boxes/tires/appliances/etc above waist level nonstop for the entire shift. Yes, it was nice to be able to think about other things but it wasn't worth being paid less, the wear and tear (5x a week), getting less time on the clock than the loaders and having to eat a horse ($$$) every day. But I definitely respect (and maybe even admire) unloaders who love to unload every day. Load isn't fun when the belt gets really heavy but at least there's conversation with other loaders, a sense of shared suffering and the occasional break between the back breakers.

 

[you aint even know it]

We just had a guy who loaded for 4 years finally get his chance to go to the back and unload -- he took it immediately. He never again has to worry about misloads, damages, or getting wrapped. All he's gotta do is be on time
. To each their own I guess.

Yep, to each their own I guess. I think that loading is so easy, just getting paid to touch packages and put them down - thats how it feels to me. I wouldn't mind if they put me in the load section today. Today is going to be fun, everybody is going to go home about 12 am today because the ft sup is not here and a maroon pt sup is going to take over and start me at the same time as the loaders. When this happens, the belt stops every second plus ill be working very slowly to dish it out to the pt sup so center manager can be on his arse tonight.

 

[407Stewerd]

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[bleedinbrown58]

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407 is awesome!! That is all! Lol

 

[sortaisle]

The unload is actually were most of the old people go in my building...well not old...but it's almost a preferred position. While loading isn't any harder physically, there's more that can go wrong. Not everyone can load, everyone can unload. For some people building walls just doesn't seem to make sense. Me, I have this weird knack of seeing packages come down the chutes and know where I can place em. I think too many people look at just the immediate package and gets lost on where to put it. If there's no place to put it, then it's backfill. If it's too big for back fill, to the side it goes...next.