UPS Light

[local804]

Very true dammor. It is tough for the people that live in the big city to see what you have just posted.Here we get off 30 stops on just one block and wouldnt even ever think about that scenerio.I just hope if it does happen that UPS wouldnt take advantage of the situation and have to post office service the low weight parcels (1-5 lbs)all around the country.Remember, with the big corporations, if you give them an inch, they will take a mile.

 

[toonertoo]

I think it is Ludicrous. After all the years we fought to make the playing field level, since USPS does not have to make a profit, by charging actual cost of doing business, they just raise our taxes!!! Now we are going to give them our packages, and pay them.......
While I see how it benefits UPS, I cannot believe they went there. It is great for the profit margin I am sure, but what it does to us is make us just another freight company.
I know I look forward to the end of the day when I have 5 or ten nice light residential deliveries where I can make up for all the bal$ busting over 70s I have had all day. And all this will do to us, the drivers, is condense our delivery area, so more work can be added to the already outdated standards we deliver by. Turning us, even more, into a freight delivery service, instead of package delivery service, and when you do get a package to deliver to a home it will be crushed beyond recognition. I hope this doesn't go through, I hope if enough gets known about it before they slide it in unannouced, that we can protest it without a strike. I do not like that way of handling this developing service idea.

I brought the article in to work today, and Not one person had heard of it, including management, or so they say...I heard it on here from a very bright teamster.

If it does go through, get out your back braces, and aging teamsters best fight for a younger retirement age next contract, because as you can see we are the only ones who have to negotiate changes.......JMHO

 

[dannyboy]

Dammor

I have been through 2 strikes at UPS during my career, and that was 3 too many.

IF you can imagine a place where I leave my center with a p600. I drive for 3 hours or so away from the center and meet 3-5 other UPS drivers with empty trucks, ones that they take home every night. We split the work and all go our merry way delivering. Any pick up pieces are brought back to the meet point by 3:30-4, and I take those back to the center with me. THe others finish the deliveries and take the vehicles home with them till tomorrow, and we do it all over again.

Anybody on this board doing deliveries this way?

Believe it or not, there are places here in the USA where this happens every day. Drivers going 300-450 miles a day delivering 10-30 packages. WE have some here that deliver the coalfields. The packages he delivers in a whole month might pay his wages for a day.

So I can see why that might seem a cost cutting method for UPS to consider.

IT just makes my BROWN BLOOD BOIL thinking about one of our packages with the UPS barcode on it, hanging off a mailbox in the rain.

IM glad Im getting to be a short timer, cause if this is the way UPS is going, I dont know if my brown pride can take it.

d

 

[dammor]

Danny,

Yes it happens elsewhere. Seems you are the feeder in a P600 for an extended center. That would be the wording, but in fact there is no center unless you consider a parking lot to be one. Here we have P700's pulling trailers up to parking lots. Some of us drive from the center to the same area to deliver and we do have a meet to get the air and pickups in. We also stay in touch with each other and help out when we can. All in all it is perhaps the least painful job at UPS. God knows we have put in our time to be here though. I agree with you on being glad to be a short timer. What I'm not sure of is if we are helping our company and the teamsters that are following behind us by fighting tooth and nail over every damn change UPS wants to make. Some make sense. Some don't. I guess my point is that in my almost 24 years here it has been a constant battle and IMO it is time for a change on both fronts. Wishful thinking I'm sure, but it would be nice.

 

[tieguy]

This plays out to new volume that we would not have gotten through our system. Many large fullfillment houses shipping hundreds of thousands of packages at a time have left us because we are too pricey. They have gone to zone skippers who move the packages to the zone they are going to and then sort the packages with most going to the post office. These packages have left us and are never coming back at our current rate structure. UPS logistics will become the zone skipper. UPS logistics will then sort the packages. The post office will get the rural packages that are more expensive to deliver due to the time and mileage involved delivering them. UPS will get the rest. UPS will get more packages and more jobs as a result. These will be packages and jobs we would not have gotten if we did not buy out and compete with the zone skippers directly. Its a win for all of us.

 

[dammor]

Tie,

As good as that might sound to some, it scares the hell out of me. Will UPS logistics have a clue what is rural and what is not? Will they give and entire town to the post office because of a zip? I'm always concerned when changes are made by folks sitting in an office. I guess getting some input from the drivers is out of the question.

 

[red]

This service has been going on for a while. First under the name RMX, now it's been rebranded to UPS Mail Innovations. Bulk mail that would have otherwise gone to the post office flys as UPS air cargo and is given to the post office near the final destination.

 

[dannyboy]

DAwn

We are talking packages and not bulk mail. I understand the concept of zone skipping, and it does have many benifits for us. But taking packages that were given to us for delivery say in New York to be delivered in Haysi Va. WE take it to the Haysi postoffice, and they deliver it for us.

And where does it stop? As DAmmor pointed out, Zip codes and what UPS has done with them in the past, such as remotes, have shown that there are problems with the system. While I understand the $$ upside for UPS, the black eye we get for service will be hard to take.

You know, hauling a USPS package for the postal service is one thing. Letting them deliver our packages is another.

d

 

[dammor]

Danny,

I agree.

I have several routes on my area that certainly are not profitable. Problem is that they have the same zip as the town. I know the town is a good profit for us because I have a pickup account there that sends out at least 80 packages a day. 3 weeks ago they shipped 210 in one day. (Had to get a bigger truck for that one)
When logistics makes the plan for us will they have this information? I guess we will see.

Tie, any thoughts?

 

[toonertoo]

I agree that mgmt should ask for driver input to institute this. When we were doing remotes, Main St USA was being remoted on certain days. And a PKG sent to 2 miles from Dover AFB, for a servicemans 21st birthday was put in remote. And I had written all over it "Please do not remote birthday present" If driver discretion had been used, it wouldnt have been remoted, and it was not a remote area anyway, pretty much Main St Dover DE. I also feel management used remote to adjust the volume. And if they were short a driver, they remoted more packages. I can see this happening with UPS LIGHT. JMO

 

[kidlogic]

I dont see how this is going to make more good paying driver jobs. More package handlers or a few feeder runs will be made,but you will see less drivers. In our center we had remotes 2 miles from the building.
The big cities will benefit ,but what about everyone else.

 

[tieguy]

" have several routes on my area that certainly are not profitable. Problem is that they have the same zip as the town. I know the town is a good profit for us because I have a pickup account there that sends out at least 80 packages a day. 3 weeks ago they shipped 210 in one day. (Had to get a bigger truck for that one)
When logistics makes the plan for us will they have this information? I guess we will see.
Tie, any thoughts?"

I'm guessing on the finer details like everyone else. I have seen some input from someone that was somewhat involved in this plan. It looks like we will feed these smalls into automated small sorts to minimize handling costs. I would think the Cach hub would be the logical choice to move a lot of this work since it has at least 8 automated small sorts. This would require extra feeder movements to move the work to CACH and explain the two days extra needed for this service.

The volume / market potential I think will drive the decision. We lost many smalls shippers over the years that could qualify for this service. I can still remember those companies shipping as much as 20 to 30 thousand packages a day. We would probably extract the shipper information and then make the decision based on the amount of packages going to some of those zips. I would imagine there would be zips that might go post office with one shipment and UPS with another depending on the density of the shipment.

 

[oakland]

I am well aware of the added service that can be offered to large shippers with this new service option. The company needs to bring this to the table with the union to hash it out. People don't realize that right now, the union and the company have been fighting over many items that were (so called) settled in the last contract negotiations. I'm not talking regular grievance stuff. The climate at the panels is not good. You cannot get a straight answer out of anyone on the company side, then if you do get an answer, they change their mind at the next meeting and deny they agreed to anything. Even with recordings and transcripts to back it up. The cat and mouse game has gotten so bad, nothing gets done. Meanwhile we take our routes out everyday and pay their paychecks. The bottom line is, do we want to fight all of the time and get nothing done or do we want to get along in a professional manner and prosper. The union is not feeling much love for the company right now, good paying jobs and all. Both sides need to work out an agreement that is "real" and won't end up in arbitration every other month. We need some trust reestablished in order to move forward and right now it is not there.

 

[local804]

I still am surprised to see volume going to another carrier.They say only the 1-5 lb parcels will be directed.If the driver is going to be in the area, he might as well deliver ALL the packages, not just the bigger ones. There are alot of fat cats in UPS since the IPO. I still am pissed off they stopped the thrift plan.DAmmor, did you say you drive 40 miles for 1 package??????Well, thats the price of doing business in UPS because over here, in a 40 mile radius, there are two buildings with 420 trucks dispatched daily and I am sure there is well over 10,000 parcels delivered in this area. If I was going to ship something to bumblebee Idaho, and I shipped it through UPS I would expect UPS to deliver it.After all, I am paying more for UPS service right? Isnt that what customer service tells the customers when they sign a contract?If I wanted a postal man to deliver it and save a few bucks , I would then walk to the post office and send it priority mail anyway.I thing its wrong to pick and choose to who we want to deliver to because of cost.For years and years UPS lost tons of money on international deliveries.What if we startd using DHL just like the post office did. Maybe our stock wouldnt be at 72.00 now, would it?Just some food for thought.

 

[formerbrown]

Keep in mind that in an agreement like this, we may keep a portion of these to deliver ourselves. UPS is not going to pay to give away a parcel that we can deliver ourselves. Could be a good for those rural areas as well as suburban. Look at the whole picture!

 

[tieguy]

"I still am pissed off they stopped the thrift plan."

Yep it was a popular plan. Are you buying stock with the employee discount? I'm just thinking about that 10 percent discount earlier this year when the stock dropped below 55 a share. If you had you have better than a 20 percent return right now. Not too shabby.

 

[dammor]

"UPS is not going to pay to give away a parcel that we can deliver ourselves"

Formerbrown, Have you read the posts? If so, one of us is not reading them right.

Tieguy, sorry, but you did not answer my question. I have what is considered a large pickup account in a rural area. What will the fine folks in logistics do about that? Will they even realize it is there? I wish I had more faith in some of big browns decisions. This one could work if done correctly, but I see a major cluster @#@# headed our way. As usual we will deal with it, but it's getting really old.

(Message edited by dammor on November 02, 2003)

 

[tieguy]

Dammor if its already a pickup it does not apply to this particular service. Business as usual.

 

[trouble1903]

ok stupid question...what will it look like? Bar code? Stamp? I think I got one on Saturday.

 

[wily_old_vet]

I'm curious about tracking the package. To the best of my knowledge our DIAD's won't scan USPS codes so will their scanners do ours and what will the customer see when they track the package?