Category: UPS News

UPS announced that it expects to hire at least 60,000 seasonal employees this Thursday through Saturday, in its annual ‘UPS Brown Friday’ events at company locations across the country.

Nearly a month before Black Friday and Cyber Monday officially kick off the holiday shopping season, the UPS Brown Friday event includes more than 400 local hiring events as well as virtual events on UPSJobs.com/BrownFriday that will support more than 1,200 locations across the U.S.

The hiring weekend is part of its broader effort, announced last month to hire seasonal workers to support its annual holiday shipping rush.

If UPS customers haven’t baked higher fuel surcharges into their 2022 shipping budgets, they better find the kitchen fast.

Effective Nov. 15, the Atlanta-based transport and logistics giant will raise its fuel surcharges by 1% on all its U.S. air and ground services, according to a source familiar with the matter. The upcoming levy comes on the heels of a 75 basis-point fuel surcharge increase that UPS imposed over the summer.

UPS, which hasn’t made a public announcement, declined comment.

UPS sets its fuel surcharges weekly from a range of price points based on the diesel and jet fuel prices set by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). For example, should the weekly national average price for on-highway diesel range between $3.62 a gallon and $3.73 a gallon, the revised surcharge for that week would be 11%, up from the current 10% levy. The government’s most recent national average for on-highway diesel was $3.71 a gallon.

There is a two-week lag between EIA’s pricing changes and when they are reflected in UPS’ surcharges. As a result, UPS’ surcharges for the week ending Nov. 1 would be based on the EIA prices for the week ending Oct. 18.

UPS announced that the published rates for its UPS Ground and UPS Air services will increase by an average of 5.9% effective December 26, 2021.

This average rate increase matches rate adjustments already announced by rival carriers FedEx and DHL.

But as has been the case for several years, UPS rates increase in late December after Christmas, while the other carriers increase their rates in early January.

UPS is also increasing the rates for certain Value-Added services and Other Charges:

As of January 9, 2022, the carrier will also be renaming “Peak Surcharges” to “Peak/Demand Surcharges” and adjusting the Zip Codes for which Area Surcharges will apply.

Sometimes, it’s a case of being at the right place at the right time.

A local UPS driver is doing more than just making deliveries, he actually helped save someone’s life.

Nickolus Fowler has been delivering for UPS for 16 years, but one October day that started like any other soon changed and became a day he’d never forget.

Making his way from one house to the next.

“She came outside and she said, ‘Hey’ and I turned around to wave and say, ‘Have a good day.’ And she said, ‘I need your help,’” UPS driver Nickolus Fowler said.

Shipping companies expect a record surge this holiday season — even bigger than last year.

So how will the recent supply chain struggles affect that spike? CBS 2’s Tim McNicholas went to one of the largest UPS facilities in the country in a search for answers to that question.

The UPS warehouse in Hodgkins might be called the package sorting superhighway.

“We got about 65 miles of belts and shoots and rollers here,” said UPS Human Resources Director Rommel Carlson.

Carlson explains that is how 1.8 million packages zip through the Hodgkins warehouse per day. Over the holiday season, that number will jump to more than 3 million per day.