BrownCafe

United Parcel Service Inc. is expanding its hires of drivers using their own vehicles to help with the avalanche of holiday deliveries spawned by online shopping, and that’s rattling veteran drivers of the iconic brown van from New York to Kentucky.

Unlike competitors FedEx Corp. and Amazon.com Inc., UPS has a unionized workforce, and local Teamsters leaders aren’t happy with a trend they see as reducing opportunities for their members and hurting the UPS brand.

“They’re lowering their own standards so much,” said Vincent Perrone, president of Local 804 in New York City and Long Island, where the personal-vehicle drivers will be used for the first time this year. The local has filed a labor grievance with UPS to challenge the jobs.

Police on Long Island are looking into a serious hit-and-run accident involving a UPS truck.

Investigators say a 34-year-old woman was struck by the truck on Doris Avenue in Franklin Square Monday around 5:05 p.m.

The truck just kept on going.

The woman was hospitalized in serious but stable condition with severe trauma injuries.

The driver of a convertible that was hit by a flying wheel from a UPS truck said he didn’t see it coming.

Stouffville resident Paul Hines was driving on Highway 407 near Leslie Street on Tuesday when his car was hit by a flying wheel. Police said Hines, who only suffered minor injuries, is “lucky to be alive.”

“I didn’t see anything, all of a sudden I heard an explosion,” Hines told CTV News Toronto on Tuesday.

In another salvo in the decade-long, low-level war between the two leading U.S. parcel carriers and a cluster of consultancies that work on behalf of carriers’ customers to optimize their parcel shipping spend, UPS Inc. said it will not agree to provide money-bank guarantees on late or missed deliveries if customers use a third party to track UPS shipments.