Hoover: Why UPS is my greatest American co. - Austin Business Journal
In this age of Wal-Mart and trillion-dollar federal budgets, we are used to seeing giant, hard-to-grasp numbers. But UPS is a human-level business. Use science, technology and algorithms as it might, the guts of the company is still people carrying around packages, often one at a time.
Our lives today would be much different without UPS, and its excellent archrival FedEx. The competition makes them both stronger. Without these guys, there would be no Amazon.com Inc. — no e-commerce. Think about what you — or the shipper — pays UPS for each package. For a few bucks, they can get it across the country in a day or two. Few organizations of any type add as much value to our economic well-being.
But perhaps most important, think about what UPS means to its employees and, through them, to the U.S. economy. Those 398,000 workers make UPS roughly tied with McDonald’s Corp. as the third-biggest employer among U.S. companies. Those employees are famously well-paid. Last I checked, driver base pay ran about $30 an hour. With overtime, your driver likely makes $80,000 to 100,000 per year. Their health benefits are fully paid for their entire family. They have generous pensions and extensive annual leave for the most senior drivers. One report indicated that the average driver has been with the company more than 16 years with turnover estimated at less than 2 percent per year.
In this age of Wal-Mart and trillion-dollar federal budgets, we are used to seeing giant, hard-to-grasp numbers. But UPS is a human-level business. Use science, technology and algorithms as it might, the guts of the company is still people carrying around packages, often one at a time.
Our lives today would be much different without UPS, and its excellent archrival FedEx. The competition makes them both stronger. Without these guys, there would be no Amazon.com Inc. — no e-commerce. Think about what you — or the shipper — pays UPS for each package. For a few bucks, they can get it across the country in a day or two. Few organizations of any type add as much value to our economic well-being.
But perhaps most important, think about what UPS means to its employees and, through them, to the U.S. economy. Those 398,000 workers make UPS roughly tied with McDonald’s Corp. as the third-biggest employer among U.S. companies. Those employees are famously well-paid. Last I checked, driver base pay ran about $30 an hour. With overtime, your driver likely makes $80,000 to 100,000 per year. Their health benefits are fully paid for their entire family. They have generous pensions and extensive annual leave for the most senior drivers. One report indicated that the average driver has been with the company more than 16 years with turnover estimated at less than 2 percent per year.
