Philly finally gets a million-square-foot warehouse - but not the thousands of jobs: UPS on Red Lion

cheryl

I started this.
Staff member
Philly finally gets a million-square-foot warehouse - but not the thousands of jobs: UPS on Red Lion - Philadelphia Inquirer

It hasn’t been announced by the company, but the Inquirer has confirmed that United Parcel Service plans to build a million-square-foot facility on the 138-acre former Budd Co. property at 1 Red Lion Rd. in Northeast Philadelphia, one of the biggest available industrial properties in the city.

Plans call for 950 parking spaces, and UPS had told city officials they were planning a facility that could employ 1,000, including shift and part-time workers. But UPS has told state officials it is committed to hiring a more modest 352 full-time workers by the time it opens in 2022, and has separately said new plants in Philadelphia and other Pennsylvania cities are part of a wave of “highly automated” facilities that won’t create as many jobs per box as earlier ones.
 

TTLS1

Well-Known Member
they will continue to automate every facility they can. it sucks the jobs aren't being created, but it will continue to be this way. there will be less jobs come next contract.
 

PCLoadPackage

Active Member
eventually that's about the only jobs UPS will have, all the sorting will be automated.

I can see how unload and sort could be automated fairly easily, even with current technology. I really want to see how they'd automate the preloader job. Don't get me wrong, a huge portion of the preloaders are some combination of lazy, drunk, stoned, or just stupid. There's just so much variability in package car designs, package sizes, crappy dispatch, etc. It just seems like it would be really tough to automate loading the package cars exactly like the load sheet says, let alone taking any driver preferences into account (which they certainly wouldn't).

If I loaded my cars exactly like the load sheets say, they'd all be complete disasters.
 

Ou812fu

Polishing toilet bowls since 1966.
I can see how unload and sort could be automated fairly easily, even with current technology. I really want to see how they'd automate the preloader job. Don't get me wrong, a huge portion of the preloaders are some combination of lazy, drunk, stoned, or just stupid. There's just so much variability in package car designs, package sizes, crappy dispatch, etc. It just seems like it would be really tough to automate loading the package cars exactly like the load sheet says, let alone taking any driver preferences into account (which they certainly wouldn't).

If I loaded my cars exactly like the load sheets say, they'd all be complete disasters.
I personally could think of a way to automate that job. And it wouldn't be all that hard to pull off right now.
The truly only thing you would need to load at the end is the irregs. Everything else could be done by automation.
 

olroadbeech

Happy Verified UPSer
why is this surprising? .......look at the quality of people out there.....

it's really about competition with non union companies. Amazon will be taking over the world before you know it anyways.

I'm selling all my UPS stock.
 
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