I don't know if that's what they are called, but coming home on the 4 hr. drive from Vegas this morning, we saw dozens of semis (some doubles) with the white/lt.cream colored big sleeper cabs with brown UPS emblems on the cabs.
I have not seen so many before. Why the difference now. I thought maybe they were relying less on trains, but I also saw the long trains in the San Bernardino mtns. with UPS trailers on them. Is something new now? There were just so many of them.
There are additional hot lanes that have been opened up to improve the service which requires more sleeper teams.
Those sleepers that you saw were going to the Ontario Day Sort. They are usually two or three day volume but there is some NDA as well. The Ont Day Sort is the last operation to be able to make service to all the preloads in the basin for Monday delivery. It services Hono and Anchorage as well. In fact if the trains miss Grande Vista than they send those to the Day Sort as well. The Ont Day Sort runs a twilight-night shift. It is kind of misleading to call it a Day Sort!
The sleepers that hit the Monday Day Sort are usually for Tuesday delivery.
When there are feeder breakdowns in the desert or worse - I had to wake up the District Manager or Ops Mgr to let them know. We would try and develop a plan to make service on everything we could. It was usually a mess. But we usually made service.
I was walking out the building at 2 or 3 on a Monday morning and a ghost feeder would show up!! Those were always the best. 2 or 3 mgmt folks and nobody else in the entire hub until the preload started at 4 am!!!
The other fun thing we had to do was walk the entire building and every single belt and feeder. (only on Sunday).... I had 2 supervisors spend 5.5 hours just walking dead belts and checking feeders. When we were done, I would throw about 15 salts on the live belts and there were about 20 loaders walking belts followed up by 20 supervisors to double check the operation. I was always worried about missing a feeder or missing a NDA bag full of smalls.
Do you think I miss those days!!!