TOS, your OP contradicts itself. On the one hand, you comment on how horrible the weather was in Chicago, yet on the other hand you complain that we are constantly failing the operation and need to invest in our infrastructure.
UPS can't control the weather which also shut down Indy for 2 days. No amount of expanded infrastructure would have allowed Indy to operate either of those 2 days.
Locally, Watertown NY got slammed with lake-effect snow, with up to 5' in some areas. They shut down for 1 day and are still struggling to get caught up. Expanding the facility does not stop the wind from drawing moisture from Lake Erie and dumping it on to the Watertown area.
Weather happens----it is how the company responds that is important and expanding infrastructure is not an appropriate response.
So many wonderful people to respond to, so ill start with this one.
Dave, the moving of packages has ALOT more to do with infrastructure than just Weather delays. In Bedford Park hub, all the trailers were buried under tons of snow, and the yard frozen over. What UPS lacked was equiptment to clear this snow, the access ways and other key factors so our tractors could get in and out and hooked up without tremendous delays in coupling. Frozen ground means NO TRACTION. Buried trailers with 2 to 3 feet of snow on top of them makes for hazardous driving as that SNOW has to fall off on other drivers on the highways.
Bedford Park is across the street from the BNSF railyard, and if you knew anything about this operation, you would know that BNSF was rejecting trailers for several factors. Trailers that were late were being rejected and those drivers were forced to reroute to NY ( Jersey) Others were rejected because of capacity, and sleeper teams had to divert all the way to bedford and cach just to bring those back to the west coast or Arizona. Some of our teams had to divert from Cach to Texas or Arizona with loads and they started out in california.
Having the yards cleared of snow alone would prevent service failures. If it takes 2 hours to get a trailer freed up because its buried behind other trailers, and there is no equiptment other than a handful of guys with one shovel trying to do it, then you have a disaster in the making. The sleeper department does not have enough drivers or equiptment to pull off these kinds "saves" of the operation.
On our trip to Cach, one team crashed seriously in the rockies AFTER we contacted ICC and informed them of the near zero visibility conditions along with the 2 feet of snow and ice on the road. ICC instructed us to "keep on going and do the best we could". This worked all the way until this team wadded up thier tractor and set into a tunnel opening at 9pm at night.
You see dave, ICC and UPS only care about time, not about safety. While running short of teams, and attempting to do more with less, UPS prefers "RISK" over infrastructure.
If "WE" didnt have to maddog out of so cal to get back to chicago in bad weather we would have never lost this team. But thats not the end of the story. You see Dave, UPS also didnt give us GAS CARDS and we couldnt just fuel up like a normal tractor. We had to divert to HUBS across the USA just to get fuel even if it took us way off route. This wasted time and mileage along the way.
We need more tractors and drivers. We need more coodination and less B.S. from ICC.
Cach is in trouble this week and UPS wouldnt be moving tons of supervisors up there from all over the USA if it wasnt in trouble.
TOS.
Trailers were already failed sitting in the cach yard long before the snow hit on monday. As I said, the trailer I pulled out of cach was due in GV (so cal) on 1/8 and I arrived there on 1/9 at 930am. ICC atttempted to divert my tractor to Seaboard (NJ) and I refused before I arrived.
UPS so cal feeder had to send all the new feeder drivers to cach on this run and it was chocked full of breakdowns and delays.
As an example, If DENVER only had enough sleeper teams to meet the drivers coming out of chicago with loads that didnt make the rails or overflow, then the so cal drivers if delayed over the rockies ( as we were for 5 hours) would have only had to make it to denver to pick up trailers. Instead, our meet drivers from chicago had to leave Brooklyn Iowa and return to illinois with our loads. There, they had to put them someplace out of the way causing them to get buried in the yards.
A denver team could have made it to Iowa, picked up all the trailers and brought them back to the denver yard and we could have got them there. Our loads could have been taken to Bedford park by those denver teams and the distanced shortened for everyone.
I know its not the ideal plan, but there has to be an alternative when things go horribly wrong on the road and schedules destroyed because of weather or a bad crash that closes the freeway for hours.