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Louisville may be best known for first-rate bourbon and super-swift horses. But it’s also one of the country’s most important cities for getting products from point A to point B whether by plane, train, truck or boat.

In May, Airports Council International ranked Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport (SDF) as the fifth busiest air cargo hub in the world and third in the U.S. for 2020. The airport handled more than 2.9 million metric tons of cargo, the trade association said.

A huge percentage of that is directly attributable to Louisville’s largest employer, UPS, which has about 24,000 employees in the city. Most of those jobs are at the UPS Worldport global air hub. At 5.2 million s.f. under roof–equivalent to about 90 football fields – it may be the largest facility of its kind on the planet.

Big Brown continues its reign as the leading U.S. delivery business. Pandemic-fueled demand propelled United Parcel Service 40 spots higher, to No. 89, on this year’s Global 500. UPS’s revenues rose 14.2%, to $84.6 billion, in 2020, keeping it ahead of perennial rival FedEx. But the shift in emphasis to residential over commercial parcels took a 70% bite out of profits, which declined to $1.34 billion. A bigger threat looms, as well. Amazon—a major partner, and rising competitor—is doubling down on a delivery network of its own. How the shipper’s CEO, Carol Tomé, installed on June 1, 2020, confronts this “frenemy” may prove to be the defining mark of her tenure.

It was hard to miss the plane that MTSU Aerospace graduate Mike Starnes brought to EAA AirVenture.

That’s because Starnes, 54, a captain for United Parcel Service, brought a brand-new Boeing 747-8F to the world’s largest aviation celebration. It is more than 63 feet tall and more than 250 feet long.

The long-range jet, with only about 30 flight hours on it before Starnes flew it from Louisville, Kentucky, to Oshkosh, turned a lot of heads at the Wisconsin air show. It is so new that it has yet to haul any cargo for UPS.

A former Kelowna UPS driver has lost his bid to get his job back after he was terminated, twice, in the wake of a physical altercation with a female customer.

But it wasn’t the altercation that got him fired for good, instead, it was a photo he sent to a co-worker while wearing a FedEx uniform with caption “F**k UPS.”

Driver Brian Trackl had been working for UPS for about 12 years on May 13, 2020 when he delivered some packages to the back of a Kelowna Pharmasave store.

A disagreement, which was caught on surveillance camera, erupted between Trackl and a customer over whether the delivery driver had to accept and take packages that the customer wanted to return, according to labour arbitration documents.

Trackl firmly shoved the female customer, causing her to stumble, after she took a few steps towards him as the argument escalated. The customer tried to throw a punch, and Trackl “proceeded to punch her in the face, with some force.”