Old days vs. Current day

[scratch]

Weight limit was 50 lbs. with no more that 100 lb total going from the same shipper to one consignee per day.

I started as a loader in 1975, and I remember the 50 lb. limit and those drop-frame trailers. You haven't felt pain until you had a trailer flap drop on your head! I worked on the Midnight Sort. If a Blue Label package was left at the end of the sort, then somebody would drive to the airport and it was line-flighted on the next plane out. It was a good PT job then. The starting pay was $4.25 an hour compared to $2.10 an hour that was the minimum wage that the fast food places would pay a teenager like me.

When I started driving in '84, Next Day Air was fairly new. I learned to record on paper, we used Delivery Records until DIAD 1 came out about 1991. I remember we had those tear off NDA labels and a 3PM Commit Time. I had an Industrial Park and I ran them first. I could have ran them with trace, my van was empty by 2:30 and then I would blow it out with Pickups.

 

[But Benefits Are Great!]

...limit and those drop-frame trailers. You haven't felt pain until you had a trailer flap drop on your head! ...

I started 2 weeks ago - I unload one of those every day. Every day the SUP points me in that direction & says "we were supposed to be rid of those YEARS ago...

Few of the latches are there or work, you have to hold the wood flap up with your head...

 

[hseofpayne]

I started 2 weeks ago - I unload one of those every day. Every day the SUP points me in that direction & says "we were supposed to be rid of those YEARS ago...

Few of the latches are there or work, you have to hold the wood flap up with your head...

Who said the unload was a mindless job? Good to see you using your head at UPS already!

 

[hseofpayne]

I was talking to one of our top senior guys today on my break and we got to talking about a couple of things about the past. He told me that progression to top pay was 90 days (I dont remember that). I never drove back when there were no bid routes either. I do remember the Christmas bonus each year though. That's a thing of the past now. Anybody remember sheeting pkgs on paper. 3 copies getting separated into our little folders. Things change so fast anymore I cant keep up with it. What are some other things different now than in the past?

I loaded for 5 years and we had these load diagrams that were taped to the wall behind the car it went with. Every AM you would have to make sure the right cars were backed into the right doors or switch the charts around. Sometimes the charts would just disappear or when loaders went on vacation we would find out the chart was no where close to how the car was supposed to be loaded. I had this one cranky old fart driver who would come in every AM and ask "What the Hell you got on here today?" This would be followed by a tirade about how bad a loader I was. One morning he got particularly buttholish and told me I had loaded his car completely backwards the day before. I just listened and said nothing, but the next morning I DID load that ole farts car completly backwards; bulk stops in the front that went in the back and vice versa. All the shelves were flip flopped and backwards. When he came in the next AM, he walked up to me real quiet and said," I'm sorry, I will never say another thing about your loads, you do as good a job as you can." It was much harder to load back then, you had 4 or 5 cars worth of streets and sequence numbers to memorize plus memorizing the load charts. When preloaders screw up now, with all the technology we have now, you just scratch your head and wonder how they would have fared back then.

 

[Jim Kemp]

How about the "Telephone Exchange". Had to cut a bunch of cords to get them out.I hated those things

 

[Babagounj]

Anybody else do this? We used to use these big ole black or red crayons on the preload to write sequence numbers on pkgs as we loaded them(I still remember those damn sequence numbers!) Once in a while, I would forget to take those crayons out of my pocket b4 I washed my preload clothes. Sure enough, when I would look in the dryer after drying my pants, there would be crayon melted all over anything I had washed plus all over the tub of the dryer! I also think UPSers started the fad of walking around in jeans with big ole wholes in 'em. Every pair of pants I owned it seemed had wholes worn in them from the conveyor belts. We were fashion setters!

All my summer shorts were actually those conveyor belt jeans, all I had to do was cut away what was left.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

Please tell us they weren't "Daisy Dukes."

 

[Babagounj]

Few of the latches are there or work, you have to hold the wood flap up with your head...

An old trick is to find a flat small, or a stick and brace( kind of an overlap brace ) it onto a flap that has a working latch. Only problem was to remember that when the good latch is released two flaps will be coming down.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

An old trick is to find a flat small, or a stick and brace( kind of an overlap brace ) it onto a flap that has a working latch. Only problem was to remember that when the good latch is released two flaps will be coming down.

And UPS made how many billions last year? $49.7? Net profit of $578M? Yet we have employees holding trailer flaps up with sticks or even with their heads.

 

[Babagounj]

Please tell us they weren't "Daisy Dukes."

Nah

 

[dannyboy]

Ah yes, the days when we could actually be telling the customer the truth when we said, "we dont go there"

Interesting some of the memories. I remember Coke doing a regional case giveaway. I remember them saying it was 250,000 cases of coke that we got to deliver. So many of them were damaged.......

One thing that no one has mentioned is the ratio. We had one part time clerk that was also the "sup" on the preload. Granted, we have a few more employees now, but we have 1 full time sup, 8 part time, and 4 clerks working the preload now. It used to be you never saw one, now you cant walk down the belt without falling over one. And with all this extra management, it takes longer to get the sort down????? I think the saying "the left hand knows not what the right hand is doing" applies here.

I also remember how hard it was for them to get hold of you on road. It was a two way street though. Sometimes good they did not get you, sometimes bad.

The big strike of 76 was also something not mentioned. Of course it was not nation wide, just a major part of the east coast.

And not the least of which is so many guys/gals that lost their jobs over stupid .

Funny, as has been mentioned, so much of it has been blocked, for sanities sake!

d

 

[looper804]

Ah the p400. An amazing creation. You could change lanes without moving the steering wheel. Whether you wanted to or not. Same with braking. Sometimes you would skid to a stop. Next time only the left would lock up, so off you went that way. I've had the stick shifter come completely out of the floor. Thats an experience. The bulkhead door was only about 5 ft high. I am 6'3". Good times....

Best part of this truck was you could line up 10 stops on the engine cover and run in and out and have the 10 done in no time.(really no bulk back then,only smalls)

 

[dannyboy]

Best part of this truck was you could line up 10 stops on the engine cover and run in and out and have the 10 done in no time.(really no bulk back then,only smalls)

Or put a helper out in a nice neighborhood with a 2 wheeler, tote box and 45 stops, and they would all fit inside the tote?

Oh and one more thing, you had to be a full time student in college to work part time at UPS. If you did not bring to work your reciept showing you were enrolled full time, you lost your job.

d

 

[upsgrunt]

An old trick is to find a flat small, or a stick and brace( kind of an overlap brace ) it onto a flap that has a working latch. Only problem was to remember that when the good latch is released two flaps will be coming down.

I never understood why, when you lifted that first flap, ( the one closest to the nose), there would be a 70 pounder wedged in there. How did they expect you to get it out when it was 2 feet below where you were standing?

 

[kenco80233]

Dec.1972 Pay$3.23 per hour-2 driver center out of 2 bay gas station-360+ miles 90-100 stops-P400 water buffalo.

 

[DS]

Wow these things bring back memories.Another thing we had,was OTPU's
which were replaced by ODS or OCA or OCPU's,it was nice because you knew when you left the bldg,exactly what your planned day looked like.
I also recall the old clipboards that you had to take 3 or 4 of because resi's and business were all coded differently,and the time card thing...
Here's an old PCM I will never forget....
Sup-firstly nobody is to tell a supervisor to friend-off,
secondly,if you find 10 or 20 stops in your car you dont usually do,its called a split,they are not misloads,
thirdly,this is my time card from last night,(he holds up about 15 timecards all stapled together),please dont leave anything on the belt.

 

[tourists24]

I remember the old P600, but Im not sure I remember the P400... has anyone got a picture out there of one?

 

[old brown shoe]

I started out in a Fred Flinstone type truck. Had to use your feet for power and drag your heels for the brakes. Our clipboards were a piece of slate and you used a hammer and chisel.Instead of numbers we used hyroglifics. ( Those were the days )

 

[Jim Kemp]

You could really ring a dogs bell when you had a full pad on the old clip board.

 

[rod]

Way back in Dec of 1999 UPS stock was going for about $62.26