BrownCafe

Three Brainerd United Parcel Service (UPS) delivery trucks were damaged by smoke and fire just before midnight Wednesday.

Nineteen firefighters responded to the call and a firefighter stayed on scene until 10:30 a.m. Thursday to secure the scene.

Brainerd Fire Chief Kevin Stunek could not comment on any of the details of the incident, but said the Minnesota state fire marshal, along with the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) are investigating.

A UPS truck with packages bound for Massachusetts crashed in Pennsylvania Friday, scattering them across a highway.

WNEP reported that a car lost control on an on-ramp on Interstate 80 near Milton and crashed into the UPS truck.

The truck then went out of control and crashed, scattering around 1,000 packages over a bridge and onto railroad tracks below.

UPS cuts its profit forecast, blaming the cost of extra measures it took to ensure deliveries were on time during the 2014 holiday season, and hinted it would start charging retailers more.

While total package volume for the holiday season came in as expected for UPS, that was largely because of the surges on Cyber Monday, the biggest e-commerce day of the year, and Dec. 22, typically the peak day for UPS because of retailers’ cutoffs for guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve. Demand for the other 59 days of the holiday season came in below UPS expectations, meaning a lot of that extra holiday muscle went unused.

As far as free PR goes, it doesn’t get much better: Six companies got a shout-out from President Barack Obama during his State of the Union address Tuesday night. And, as it happens, all but one is a big spender in the Washington influence game.

United Parcel Service: The shipping company was the only one mentioned by Obama that has overwhelmingly supported Republicans over the years through its political action committees and employee donations. It gave more than $3 million — only one-third of which went to Democrats — in the 2014 election cycle. It also spent $7.6 million on lobbying the federal government in 2014.

The guns, jewelry and phones were stolen from the shipping company’s Ontario hub and some were sold by a co-defendant

A former United Parcel Service driver was found guilty Thursday, Jan. 15, of federal gun trafficking charges for stealing 72 guns from six shipments at the shipping company’s Ontario hub and giving some to a Moreno Valley co-defendant to sell on the street, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office news release.