Discuss: Brown Drops a Bombshell

[cheryl]

Brown Drops a Bombshell - The Street
Among the many possible answers to the question of what Brown can do for you, the ability to meet Wall Street's estimates would certainly rank high on the list for investors.

[arvistyler]

I read the article and read the numbers, but the numbers reminded me so much of UPS itself it became apparent. UPS's failure in the stock market is simple, thus the common sense factor. The inability of the company to use sound commen sense has faded over time. The institution of EDD is one such example. For some reason the company see's it as Christ itself in order to make a perfect world. But the company has totally lost sight of the human factor, which has provided for it's sucess in the past. Sound human judgement, and not numbers drive a successfull business. No computer or series of numbers have created sucess, it's been the human mind, and the ability of critical thinking. UPS's sucess in the future relies on its people. Just to say , "We pay them 26 bucks an hour", gives them no right to treat us like slaves? Attention to the employees and to the company , in that exact order will help UPS. UPS needs to understand that temperatures in the back of a package car exceed 140 degrees at times, that icy roads can reduce a 60 mile per hour speed to 15. And an elderly woman at the door who is disabled may take five times the normal amount of time to take care of. These are things that can't be taken care of by numbers. I've been a driver for 24 years and I could care less about the stock price, but common sense tells me that I should take care of my customer first, and not worry about some numbers that someone has devised in some cubicle, and has never experienced the ink freezing in his pen at 30 degrees below zero. UPS will survive because good people take care of their customers. Common sense. Throw that into your hardrive and you'll have to reboot.

[BrownBeanCounter]

While I believe there is some merit to your views on the topic the simple fact remains that our company is no longer run by our company. Ever since we went public we have conceded that the reins are slowly slipping out of our hands.

When we started the process of the IPO the goal was to have 10% out on the street and 90% still in the hands of the employees. Unfortunately we now see the street holding over 50% of the outstanding shares. As this trend continues the push to 'react' to the street (aka, investors) has overwhelmed our ability to be 'proactive'.

Knee-jerk reactions have become the flavor of the moment within UPS. Each quarter we push to hold the line and be more productive only to have it thrown back down the system that we have to do even more with even less. The bottomline is that it costs a lot of money nad it takes a lot of people to run the largest transportation company in the world. Eventually, if we are unable to wrap our collective arms around this 800 pound gorilla we will find ourselves being trampled by the gorilla as it looks for its next bunch of bananas.