Questions for UPS drivers, please help!

[Cody91]

Marketing Project For High School Student Please Read.

Hello, for the purposes of the website's rules, all I will say is that my name is Cody. I am a senior in high school, and I am apart of a marketing club called DECA, which stands for Distributive Education Clubs of America. In DECA, we have marketing competitions on a state-wide and national basis. This year, my marketing teacher in high school asked me if I would participate in the Technical-Sales Events competition. The theme of this year's technical competition is the role of GPS systems in shipping. In this field, I am suppose to find a GPS device that I believe, would be the best fit to sell to a shipping company. In order to accomplish this task and to make my presentation stand out, I wanted to talk to actual UPS drivers or anyone who knows about the standard delivery truck. In order to address situations such as decreasing fuel costs and limiting the number of hours trucks have to be on the roads, I need more information on the gas mileage of these trucks, and other factors such as standard delivery times. Also, I felt it would be best to hear from a driver's point of view as to what a driver looks for in a GPS system in their delivery vehicle. Any help would be gladly appreciated, thank you.

 

[Dis-organized Labor]

Hello, for the purposes of the website's rules, all I will say is that my name is Cody. I am a senior in high school, and I am apart of a marketing club called DECA, which stands for Distributive Education Clubs of America. In DECA, we have marketing competitions on a state-wide and national basis. This year, my marketing teacher in high school asked me if I would participate in the Technical-Sales Events competition. The theme of this year's technical competition is the role of GPS systems in shipping. In this field, I am suppose to find a GPS device that I believe, would be the best fit to sell to a shipping company. In order to accomplish this task and to make my presentation stand out, I wanted to talk to actual UPS drivers or anyone who knows about the standard delivery truck. In order to address situations such as decreasing fuel costs and limiting the number of hours trucks have to be on the roads, I need more information on the gas mileage of these trucks, and other factors such as standard delivery times. Also, I felt it would be best to hear from a driver's point of view as to what a driver looks for in a GPS system in their delivery vehicle. Any help would be gladly appreciated, thank you.

Cody:

I am sure you will be overwhelmed by UPSers wanting to help you.
I have two comments:
1. Where are you located?
2. When posting or sending an e-mail, it is always a good thing to put spaces between paragraphs to make it easier for the Reader to comprehend. The basic rules of Grammar are applicable.

Now that I'm done giving you a hard time, I am sure you will get what you need and then some.

Work hard...

Best Regards,
DOL

 

[yeldarb]

Most drivers dont use a GPS device, (at least one that they are in control of) since they are familiar with their routes, and know where all the streets are. Most trucks get anywhere from 7-18 MPG, (I assume, since all three of the trucks I have been assigned to have been that range).

 

[tonyexpress]

Cody91,

Welcome to the BrownCafe! I saw this post in the newbies thread and was going to suggest you post here...Good job and good luck!

 

[Dagoof]

We use what they call a map.

 

[DS]

Hey cody.heres my 2 cents.UPS technology has progressed to the point where they have the ability to see where every driver is at any given time with GPS.The truth is ,if they follow the route using GPS ,it adds about an hour onto the drivers day,Area knowledge is essential in productivity as opposed to planning from space.If you're trying to sell gps technology to a shipping company nowadays,you better be convincing,like Vince,the shamwow guy.

 

[satellitedriver]

DECA is an excellent program, and I applaud your efforts.
GPS is for tracking and observation, not planning.
UPS is currently in a dumbing down phase attempting to make the model fit the real world, through technology.
The attempt is to take the individual intelligence of any given employee and replace it with a formulaic paradigm.
A good analogy would be a plate of cooked spaghetti with a light sprinkling of black pepper.
The plate is the area to deliver.
The spaghetti is the roadways.
The pepper is the delivery points.
The formula/dogmatic approach will attempt efficiency of distance between all points.
The pragmatic approach of a dedicated skilled driver -(read as efficient)- will take in the constant variables-(yes, that is an oxymoron)- and meet the goal.
As of yet, no CRAY computer can predict a day as well as a seasoned driver who looks into his pkg car in the morning.
Directly to your main questions;
No GPS, no maps, just area knowledge on my part.
10mpg is a good average on all vehicles I have driven.

Cody,
I wish you great success in your pursuit.

Steve

 

[hurricanegunner]

Hi Cody, thanks for your post here. In regards to your statement about limiting the number of hours trucks are on the road, we drivers have nothing to say about that. We simply stay out on our routes until we are done. Nothing we can do about limiting hours on the road.
Keep working hard Cody.

 

[brownrod]

As far as MPG of the trucks I have no idea. I have never been provided this information as a driver. We have people that are paid to fuel the trucks after I've gone home.


We have GPS technology in our DIAD. But it is used to spy on the drivers. Not to help them do their jobs.

I know a couple drivers who use the GPS on their iPhones in conjunction with google earth and it helps them when they are on new routes in areas they are not familiar with.

GPS isn't great at finding a particular house but can be helpful when you need to find a new road or unmarked dirt road that might not be on your map.

People tend to ask me why we don't use GPS all the time. My standard answer is that a GPS would get me in the neighborhood but won't tell me which ghetto, unmarked house is the one I have to deliver to.

After you've done a route a few times you rely on your area knowledge to do your job efficiently.

I think having mapquest on our DIADs or using mapquest on our personal internet phones would be most useful. And that's just to locate new roads that aren't published on our maps yet.

 

[rod]

.


I think having mapquest on our DIADs or using mapquest on our personal internet phones would be most useful. And that's just to locate new roads that aren't published on our maps yet.

Don't rely on Mapquest to be 100% accurate. I've been trying for 3 years to get my road listed. Google maps finally came through for me (after the same 3 years) but so far you can't find my address using Mapquest.

 

[Brown287]

Hello Cody, GPS or any sort of mapping technology is only useful for the initially drive across a new area. Imagine if you delivered a paper route in your own neighborhood, the first time through GPS would only aid you in actual identification of streets and address. You would discover on your first trip that neighborhoods have a certain number break to them ie. odds on one side, and rather the street is high to low or low to high. UPS's GPS informs us drivers if were at the right address or not but at this time has no direction capabilities.

 

[Pkgrunner]

Re: Marketing Project For High School Student Please Read.

Hello, for the purposes of the website's rules, all I will say is that my name is Cody. I am a senior in high school, and I am apart of a marketing club called DECA, which stands for Distributive Education Clubs of America. In DECA, we have marketing competitions on a state-wide and national basis. This year, my marketing teacher in high school asked me if I would participate in the Technical-Sales Events competition. The theme of this year's technical competition is the role of GPS systems in shipping. In this field, I am suppose to find a GPS device that I believe, would be the best fit to sell to a shipping company. In order to accomplish this task and to make my presentation stand out, I wanted to talk to actual UPS drivers or anyone who knows about the standard delivery truck. In order to address situations such as decreasing fuel costs and limiting the number of hours trucks have to be on the roads, I need more information on the gas mileage of these trucks, and other factors such as standard delivery times. Also, I felt it would be best to hear from a driver's point of view as to what a driver looks for in a GPS system in their delivery vehicle. Any help would be gladly appreciated, thank you.

For shipping companys like UPS or the USPS, the drivers deliver to a defined area that essentially does not vary much from day to day. Basically they run up one street then down the next and are on nearly every street every day. Even if a driver is not familiar with an area he is delivering, he can basically just follow the order in which the deliveries are lined up in his truck and delivery board and still get the job done. The routes are already laid out, and even if they are laid out poorly, a driver will figure out the most efficient way to deliver or "run" it after some trial and error. For the most part, everything on the drivers list(EDD) is at least in the same general area as the previous or next stop.

The type of GPS that UPS currently employs uses data collected over a period of time to match addresses in the list(EDD) with delivery coordinates. For example: 100 Main St. is delivered at 100 Main St. 10 times at the same GPS coordinates, the software memorizes that location for 100 main. Now, If I were to scan 100 Main St at 1000 Main St, the software would alert me that I am not in the correct location for that package...

IMO: drivers for shipping companies like UPS would not really need GPS assistance to find out where they are going but its not a bad tool for making sure you are delivering the right package to the right place....

Good luck

 

[satellitedriver]

Hello Cody, GPS or any sort of mapping technology is only useful for the initially drive across a new area. Imagine if you delivered a paper route in your own neighborhood, the first time through GPS would only aid you in actual identification of streets and address. You would discover on your first trip that neighborhoods have a certain number break to them ie. odds on one side, and rather the street is high to low or low to high. UPS's GPS informs us drivers if were at the right address or not but at this time has no direction capabilities.

The paper route is a perfect analogy.

 

[TheJoe]

I think I delivered to DECA before hah.

 

[Brownnblue]

Cody:
All of the answers posts in this thread are accurate. There is one suggestion I'd like to make that I have not seen touched on.
I started driving in the mid 80s when GPS was a baseball statistic. I cut my teeth on route jumping, which means that I would basically fill in for the drivers who were on vacation. This meant often going into areas with which I had little or no familiarity. What I would do to plan out a route was this: I would get a copy of map, or even better, a copy of a map of just the area I had to deliver to. Then I would look at the street names of the packages, then highlight them on the map. This would give me a sort of "mental snapshot" that I could use to plan the route as best as possible. I found it very helpful to kind of focus in on where the streets with deliveries are. It also gave me my first taste of managerial arrogance, as one supervisor asked me if I knew how to use a highlighter.
Fast forward to today. Most of the routes and areas are now laid out in advance, as the previous posters have pointed out. However, on an average route, it is unlikely that you will have a delivery for every street on your route. If a GPS could be developed that highlighted the streets that a driver had deliveries for when the route was dispatched, it could be useful to the novice driver. This could be done in advance in conjunction with PAS, and I would think that it would be much easier for the driver to manipulate the screen data to what is most useful to him/her at that time.

 

[UPSGUY72]

Like the other have said GPS is great tool but it isn't acurate on address numbers. Houses on routes don't always go in order, street are closed or are not passable but still on maps and gps systems. In the winter you might have to change your the way you do your route do to weather and road condition.

Also as a driver we are thinking about the next 4 or 5 stops tp plan are route more efficiently. Also Unless your a cover driver you drive the same route everyday and now exactly where the delivery is without even looking it just becomes automatic.