Ground shipments, primarily residential deliveries, have been in focus for United Parcel Service over the recent quarters. The pandemic resulted in people being confined to their homes and there was a surge in e-commerce activities, bolstering the ground shipments for UPS as well as FedEx, especially in 2020. For perspective, average daily package volume for ground shipments rose 14.5% y-o-y to 17.4 million in 2020. This clubbed with a 4% rise in average revenue per piece for ground shipments meant total ground segment revenues grew 20% over the same period.
However, the situation has changed over the last year or so. The vaccination rate has been on a gradual rise with nearly 60% of the U.S. population currently vaccinated against Covid-19. This has resulted in economies opening up gradually, and people have started to venture out of their homes. This also impacted the ground shipment volume for UPS. The company reported a 2.5% decline in volume in Q3 this year, though the volume remained higher by 2% for the nine month period ending Sep 2021. Despite slowing growth in ground shipment volume, UPS managed to post segment revenue growth of nearly 14% thus far in 2021, driven by better price realization.
The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear, right? Brett Batts, a UPS driver does just that. Hear him sing a tune on Good Day Chicago!
In the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, one delivery driver dropped off more than just gifts and now people from all over have blessed him in return.
What appeared as a simple holiday delivery, quickly turned into a Christmas miracle full of hope, love, and joy for Jessica Kitchel.
Kitchel and her husband Mack live in Roswell, Georgia, with their daughter Charlie and newborn, Chancy. On a day she thought a few packages were arriving, she checked her Nest door camera to find so much more.
Kitchel’s Nest video camera captured a UPS delivery driver saying, “If this is a ‘it’s a boy’ house, I hope all is going well with your newborn. I had a child at around the same time you guys did, I just hope everything is going good, God bless, and Happy Holidays.”
Carol Tomé says she was “full-on retired at my farm in northwest Georgia” when UPS CEO David Abney announced that he was going to retire. Tomé had moved out of The Home Depot’s C-suite in 2019, where she had been CFO since 2001.
But Tomé had in no way stepped completely away from corporate life. She was still on the board at several companies, including UPS. When the leadership at UPS began succession planning, they focused, Tomé says, “long and hard on the persona … the skills and experience that person needed to possess.”
Turned out Tomé was their perfect match.