See....it wasn't just incompetence.

The Other Side

Well-Known Troll
Troll
There was NOTHING in this article other than SPECULATION from a FORMER executive for DHL, a company in the USA that suffered the largest ground failure in recent memory.

He adds NOTHING to substantiate the business side of this years christmas failure. He blames Weather?

He mentions NOTHING about the cutbacks in staffing, the reduction of trucks on the road both feeder and package. He mentions NOTHING about the excessive hours by package drivers across the country attempting to do more on longer days on the road. He mentions NOTHING about UPS failing to properly forecast volume despite its claims to having the most sophisticated forecasting mechanisms in the industry. He mentions NOTHING about the failure of hiring additional seasonal drivers to ease workloads and properly delivering packages on their schedule delivery days.. He mentions NOTHING about the thousands of "MISSED" packages that were rapant across this country. He mentions NOTHING about IE and its division managers predicting in november that volume would be LIGHTER this year than in previous years and that packages would be SMALLER thereby reducing the need for additional capacity.

Instead, he blames a snowstorm as the ultimate cause of failure.

If you are inclined to want to protect the UPS failure, then this guy is your man. A spokeshole without the FIRST CLUE about the UPS operations at ground level.

Sorry FOLKS, but the burden lays upon Scott Davis and his industrial morons who bought into the "OBAMA ECONOMY" rhetoric and failed to "GET THE BIG PICTURE".

"expect the unexpected", "look outside the box", "leave yourself an out",

Endless rhetoric given to us everyday and yet the very company that needed to depend on this rhetoric failed to GRASP just a single one.

I BLAME the company executives for a massive failure and further, attempting to use spokesholes to blame the customers and shippers.

TOS.
 

Brownslave688

You want a toe? I can get you a toe.
There was NOTHING in this article other than SPECULATION from a FORMER executive for DHL, a company in the USA that suffered the largest ground failure in recent memory.

He adds NOTHING to substantiate the business side of this years christmas failure. He blames Weather?

He mentions NOTHING about the cutbacks in staffing, the reduction of trucks on the road both feeder and package. He mentions NOTHING about the excessive hours by package drivers across the country attempting to do more on longer days on the road. He mentions NOTHING about UPS failing to properly forecast volume despite its claims to having the most sophisticated forecasting mechanisms in the industry. He mentions NOTHING about the failure of hiring additional seasonal drivers to ease workloads and properly delivering packages on their schedule delivery days.. He mentions NOTHING about the thousands of "MISSED" packages that were rapant across this country. He mentions NOTHING about IE and its division managers predicting in november that volume would be LIGHTER this year than in previous years and that packages would be SMALLER thereby reducing the need for additional capacity.

Instead, he blames a snowstorm as the ultimate cause of failure.

If you are inclined to want to protect the UPS failure, then this guy is your man. A spokeshole without the FIRST CLUE about the UPS operations at ground level.

Sorry FOLKS, but the burden lays upon Scott Davis and his industrial morons who bought into the "OBAMA ECONOMY" rhetoric and failed to "GET THE BIG PICTURE".

"expect the unexpected", "look outside the box", "leave yourself an out",

Endless rhetoric given to us everyday and yet the very company that needed to depend on this rhetoric failed to GRASP just a single one.

I BLAME the company executives for a massive failure and further, attempting to use spokesholes to blame the customers and shippers.

TOS.
Some places had more problems than other but the only WIDESPREAD failure was air on Xmas eve. The reason was Louisville simply couldn't handle volume. Not much we could do about that really. The 70% increase on orders December 23rd overwhelmed the system.
 

sortaisle

Livin the cardboard dream
Oh geez...where to begin...since you're in sunny California, I don't expect you to understand weather related problems. The article also mentions UPS hired 55,000 extra employees, chartered 23 jets, and got thousands of extra trucks to help deliver the volume. Now I won't pretend that UPS did all they could. They tried to be lean and mean and they'll pay for those sins. But there's no possible way you can ignore Amazon's ridiculous expectations and the weather.
 

Overpaid Union Thug

Well-Known Member
There was NOTHING in this article other than SPECULATION from a FORMER executive for DHL, a company in the USA that suffered the largest ground failure in recent memory.

He adds NOTHING to substantiate the business side of this years christmas failure. He blames Weather?

He mentions NOTHING about the cutbacks in staffing, the reduction of trucks on the road both feeder and package. He mentions NOTHING about the excessive hours by package drivers across the country attempting to do more on longer days on the road. He mentions NOTHING about UPS failing to properly forecast volume despite its claims to having the most sophisticated forecasting mechanisms in the industry. He mentions NOTHING about the failure of hiring additional seasonal drivers to ease workloads and properly delivering packages on their schedule delivery days.. He mentions NOTHING about the thousands of "MISSED" packages that were rapant across this country. He mentions NOTHING about IE and its division managers predicting in november that volume would be LIGHTER this year than in previous years and that packages would be SMALLER thereby reducing the need for additional capacity.

Instead, he blames a snowstorm as the ultimate cause of failure.

If you are inclined to want to protect the UPS failure, then this guy is your man. A spokeshole without the FIRST CLUE about the UPS operations at ground level.

Sorry FOLKS, but the burden lays upon Scott Davis and his industrial morons who bought into the "OBAMA ECONOMY" rhetoric and failed to "GET THE BIG PICTURE".

"expect the unexpected", "look outside the box", "leave yourself an out",

Endless rhetoric given to us everyday and yet the very company that needed to depend on this rhetoric failed to GRASP just a single one.

I BLAME the company executives for a massive failure and further, attempting to use spokesholes to blame the customers and shippers.

TOS.

The point of the article was to show that all the factors mentioned in it contributed to the failure and not just UPS's usual peak behaviors. UPS's piece of the blame pie alone was not enough to cause the failure. Not one of the factors alone was enough. All of them together caused it. Only ignorant outsiders and employees that are so absorbed in the "I hate management" mentality are unable to see this.
 

Overpaid Union Thug

Well-Known Member
I'm too drunk right now so I didn't read past this sentence. I'm sure you made a great point.
But... cutbacks in staffing? You must be referring to UPS's daily routine...

Exactly! UPS did what they always do. Only this year there was an unexpected late surge of orders, bad weather, and a shipper or two not following the peak plan (picking orders halfway into Christmas Eve). None of these factors alone would have caused this. Especially not UPS's usual forecasting blunders and ridiculous cut backs.
 

scratch

Least Best Moderator
Staff member
I thought that Peak ran well in my building from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve. Every driver had a Helper, a lot of Peak Season routes were in driven by Preloaders that went through driving school, and we didn't have many late air meets. Our start times were rolled back to 9:30, which I thought was ridiculous to get out of the building at 10:00. I only got 42 hours a week for those first two weeks after Thanksgiving, I clocked out under eight hours a few times. Our weather was decent for the most part. I think our Preload should have been staffed better and a few more routes would have made things a little better. Our management kept saying that they had no real idea how much volume was coming in the last few days, the forecasts were all over the place. I think we need to put a limit on the bigger shippers about how much we can take from them that last week before.
 
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