Covemastah
Hoopah drives the boat Chief !!
every yr we had to deliver the pitney bows gadget for thepkg register,machine that spit out the sticker with ship # price and id #
I wonder how many drivers have never used a clipboard
- Thread starter Big Babooba
- Start date
satellitedriver
Moderator
Ah, the old death trap P400's.Put many thousands of miles on a P400. Loading about 10 stops on the big shelf up front sure made it easier to remember your next stop. I remember when UPS finally put seat belts in my 400. At that time the drivers seat was made to tilt forward so you could walk behind it to deliver out of the drivers door. It took them almost a year to weld the seat bracket down so in otherwords if you had a head on crash you were strapped into the seat but the seat itself would tilt forward. Nice!
On a country washboard road they loved to start swapping ends. You never knew when you hit your brakes if it was going to pull left or right.
Not to mention cracking your skull when you forgot to duck getting in or out of the back.
Logged about 150,000 miles on one. I do not miss it a bit.
PAX
Big Babooba
Well-Known Member
DIAD1 -Does It Always Die?
helenofcalifornia
Well-Known Member
Didn't realize there were sooo... many old timers online here. I thought they were mostly young guns! I mostly remember the "good old days" as "before shorts (BS)" and "after shorts (AS)."
satellitedriver
Moderator
It is amazing Helen. I have seen so many drivers and management come and go through the years.
Have you ever asked yourself the question,;
If everyone else can't cut it, why am I still here?
PAX
The clipboard holder was a prehistoric version of DIAD's EDD List. You would sheet up a bunch of addresses, (abbreviated, of course), and go at it.
Just Lurking
Well-Known Member
How about before the diad flagged a package has signature required. You could pre-record a good number of stops and just run them off. Afterwards you stop and dr/complete the stops to only find out that a certain package need a signature. Usually it would be one of the first tops that you had pre-recorded/delivered miles back.
Cementups
Box Monkey
Sadly we still have a driver who I eat lunch with who still does that. Even with today's EDD technology.
I started with UPS after DIAD 1 started but I did have times that I had to use the green books to physically write up al my stops. That is, until I got smart. They would tell us then when we got back to the building that we would have to manually enter them into a new DIAD sot hat they were in the system. From then on I would cut part of the tracking label off and write the address on the back and stuff it in my pocket. Made it especially easy when it happened one peak when I still had over 100 stops to do. Whne I got back to the building all I hd to d then was type int he address nd then scan the label and DR it or doa clarifuy sig with their last name followed by SOP (signature on Paper)(I would have the customer sign the back of the tracking label)
Work smarter, not harder.
satellitedriver
Moderator
Used it all the time.
One of the faults I had with it was the way it stuckout(in your way). The other was, the way it woud pickup the "harmonic vibration"( nothing melodious about it)
of the pkg car going down a washboard country road. The truck is a bouncing on down the road and you watch the clipboard holder start gaining speed as it bounces up and down. It was a game to see how long it took for the clipboard to fly out. If a sidewind was blowing, I didn't bother to put it in its holder.
Do I miss those days?
Somewhat.
PAX
rod
Retired 22 years
Now I'm really going to age myself. When I first started a shipper could only send 100 lbs a day to the same address and the weight limit per box was 50 lbs. Also I started just after they got rid of the clipon plastic bowties that the drivers would take off as soon as they left the building. Also the drivers wore the old style bus driver hats- not baseball caps. One of my first jobs was running a shuttle route to the just opened North Dacota center that was located in Moorehead ,Mn.- across the river from Fargo. For the 1st week or so I made quite a few trips that envolved running an empty truck over and maybe bringing 1 or 2 pkgs back. God it was boring. I picked up every hitch hiker I could just to make the night go faster and keep me awake. Even took my wife with me a few times but for some reason she didn't like being dropped off at a truckstop at 1:00 at night while I went on in to do the sort. Picked her up on the return trip. When I 1st started UPS didn't deliver states west of the Mississippi River (except California,Wash. & Oregon.) If I recall correctly Texas was one of the hardest states for UPS to get delivery rights to. I remember some poor driver that drove up from South Dakota that got stuck driving a diesel powered 6 Cube that had a tow bar that pulled another gas 6 cube. That must of been tons of fun to handle.
satellitedriver
Moderator
Damn Rod,Now I'm really going to age myself. When I first started a shipper could only send 100 lbs a day to the same address and the weight limit per box was 50 lbs. Also I started just after they got rid of the clipon plastic bowties that the drivers would take off as soon as they left the building. Also the drivers wore the old style bus driver hats- not baseball caps. One of my first jobs was running a shuttle route to the just opened North Dacota center that was located in Moorehead ,Mn.- across the river from Fargo. For the 1st week or so I made quite a few trips that envolved running an empty truck over and maybe bringing 1 or 2 pkgs back. God it was boring. I picked up every hitch hiker I could just to make the night go faster and keep me awake. Even took my wife with me a few times but for some reason she didn't like being dropped off at a truckstop at 1:00 at night while I went on in to do the sort. Picked her up on the return trip. When I 1st started UPS didn't deliver states west of the Mississippi River (except California,Wash. & Oregon.) If I recall correctly Texas was one of the hardest states for UPS to get delivery rights to. I remember some poor driver that drove up from South Dakota that got stuck driving a diesel powered 6 Cube that had a tow bar that pulled another gas 6 cube. That must of been tons of fun to handle.
You are making me feel young.(I wish)
Please tell me you still have one of those clip-on bow ties. I have never seen one.
You are correct,Texas was one of the last states for UPS to get full delivery rights. Pkgs could be shipped into and out off Texas by UPS, but not inside of Texas. A firm called TEXPAC(sp) held all the rights for internal delivery of pkgs in TX. Good ole' boy network at play.
It took 18 yrs of legal battles for UPS to win the right to deliver inside of Texas.
I am glad they did.
TEXPAC folded that year and I was hired during that Texas expansion of UPS.
Thanks for contributing your memories.
I only hope that they encourage the new employee's to see that if they are willing to stick with it they will prosper.
I sound like a PR man for UPS, in a way I am.
Wearing a Plastic Bow Tie,
No Way!
PAX
under the radar
A Trained Professional
My first package car (1978) was a 1957 Ford P400 we called the Batmobile. When I was qualifying, with my Center Manager in the car, the wiring around the windshield burst into flames. I learned the proper way to use the fire extinguisher.
retired2000
Well-Known Member
did we always remember to put the carbon paper under the top sheet? who remembers carbon paper?
ROD...I started driving on March 3rd, 1963 in Reading Pa, which is in eastern Pa. At that time the only service UPS provided in that part of Pa was the 18 counties in eastern Pa, from Scranton to Philly. A package could not be shipped from that part of Pa to any other part of Pa. There wasn't even service to NY or NJ from Philly.
I was a Center Manager in Scranton Pa when I was assigned to the expansion team to train new package drivers for the Texas opening. I worked in the Texas City Center training drivers in Galveston the 1st day UPS had the authority to service the people of Texas.
The CLIPBOARD and DELIVERY RECORD is a part of UPS history that few of us remember today.
I was a Center Manager in Scranton Pa when I was assigned to the expansion team to train new package drivers for the Texas opening. I worked in the Texas City Center training drivers in Galveston the 1st day UPS had the authority to service the people of Texas.
The CLIPBOARD and DELIVERY RECORD is a part of UPS history that few of us remember today.
Harley Rider
34 yrs & done!
We just moved to a new house and I was going through a bunch of stuff that hadn't been opened in the last three moves. 
My wife worked for UPS too and I found a bunch of the old delivery notices we used before the gummed type. I resorted to a piece of paper several times when I left the building and forgot to grab a handfull of them. Also found some of the old pens we use to have. These were a black barrel type that would write when the surface was wet. I was always amazed with these pens and was pretty sad when we ran out and they switched to another type. Anyone still have an old pocket protector with their name tag tucked inside?
We had a big yard sale yesterday and an antique dealer stopped by. He noticed two of the old package cars models my wife had inside the door and was having a hissy fit to buy them. The wife wasn't having any of it. Thought she was going to have to escort him off the property!
My wife worked for UPS too and I found a bunch of the old delivery notices we used before the gummed type. I resorted to a piece of paper several times when I left the building and forgot to grab a handfull of them. Also found some of the old pens we use to have. These were a black barrel type that would write when the surface was wet. I was always amazed with these pens and was pretty sad when we ran out and they switched to another type. Anyone still have an old pocket protector with their name tag tucked inside?We had a big yard sale yesterday and an antique dealer stopped by. He noticed two of the old package cars models my wife had inside the door and was having a hissy fit to buy them. The wife wasn't having any of it. Thought she was going to have to escort him off the property!
j4bucks
Member
I started part time just before diad came out. I had to sheet on paper at peak for a couple of years. I remember learning all the unit numbers for diffenent areas. Work nights after our sort we took turns in filing all the paper work from that day. Man that was alot of paper. I would like to say Thank You to all the memories you have shared. I loved reading them all.
Anyone remember the sheet writing audits? You'd come in and there would be 10 suits sitting at tables waiting for your clipboards. There'd always be one or two drivers that had bulk stops that hadn't put in all the shipper numbers. We had one driver that always got 100% on his audits, his writing was so bad no one could read what he wrote.
