25 ms·

UPS’s $20B Problem: Operations Stuck in the 20th Century

183 points by dsr12 8y ago

neonate 8y ago
http://archive.li/5YnbM http://archive.li/5YnbM
- hotdog97 8y ago
  Is there a list of which paywalled sites this awesome tool is capable of handling? (Seems to be the same as archive.is)
  - 21 8y ago
    I think we should have a website or something where you put in a pay-walled URL, and it does whatever trick or redirects you where-ever you can see it. Like SciHub basically.
    - Baeocystin 8y ago
      The Chrome extension Unpaywall does exactly that. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpaywall/iplffkdpngmdjhlpjmppncnlhomiipha https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpaywall/iplffkdp... It doesn't bat 1.000, of course, but it is successful often enough to be useful.
    - hotdog97 8y ago
      I was thinking of creating something similar for all of those US news sites that have blocked EU-based readers from accessing their sites out of a mostly unfounded panic. (PS: love your HN username.)
      - briandear 8y ago
        So all those US sites are just ignorant? They didn’t have lawyers actually advising them? They just unilaterally shut off access to millions of people out of an abundance of caution? “Unfounded panic” isn’t a business strategy and any non-trivial business is going to operate from legal advice. Obviously, the risk is real enough: the threat of 5% of global earnings is a pretty big incentive to be extremely cautious when dealing with an EU that has a huge financial incentive to go after large American companies. I wouldn’t run my business with the “hope” that regulators are benevolent. If the media publishes a story critical of a country’s government, what’s to stop them from using GDPR as the basis for a very expensive witchhunt? Even if you have done everything correctly, there is still a significant compliance risk. It isn’t the compliance itself that is problematic — it’s the compliance risk you subject yourself to when serving Europe. Given most news organizations are hanging by a thread financially, one bit of back luck from an aggressive regulator could destroy the business. It’s the same reason many European banks have refused to service American customers: the FATCA compliance risk.
        hotdog97 8y ago
        > They didn’t have lawyers actually advising them? They just unilaterally shut off access to millions of people out of an abundance of caution? Those two statements are not mutually exclusive. I think they did have lawyers who advised them. They concluded that the potential risk is larger than the gain (in ads - europeans love their privacy and adblockers; and ad rates are comparatively quite low outside of the UK). One, I think they should have hired european lawyers for this. Two, comparing with the FATCA risk is amusing.
    - briandear 8y ago
      How do the writers of the articles get paid if everyone bypasses paywalls? They aren’t like musicians that make most of their money touring and their recorded music is more of a show-marketing tool. Most writers are almost anonymous. I’m just having a hard time understanding the ethics of this.
      - hotdog97 8y ago
        Well, if a particular news site blocks europeans I would guess they are not expecting any kind of revenue from there. I find it hard argue against a service that unblocks this kind of news site for europeans from an ethical POV. Copyright law is of course different, but it was you who introduced the ethics aspect.
  - sudouser 8y ago
    check outline.com
    - hotdog97 8y ago
      That site does work great with WSJ.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tofu8 8y ago
  I can't access this link (ERR_NAME_RESOLUTION_FAILED). Anyone else having the same problem?
  - curiousgal 8y ago
    You're having DNS issues.
  - __float 8y ago
    1.1.1.1 is giving SERVFAIL but 8.8.8.8 is handling it just fine.
- tyfon 8y ago
  I really want a setting on my HN account to filter out paywalled articles from the front page.
  - LateRuin 8y ago
    With any WSJ article, just open twitter and copy&paste the title. Any link to WSJ from twitter will get around the paywall -- even tweets from the official WSJ twitter account. here ya go: https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1007786098859413504 https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1007786098859413504
- ajnin 8y ago
  For some reason this links redirects me to a blog article about a dispute between archive.is and their registrar. Replacing .li by .is works.
tehlike 8y ago
This is an opportunity for Amazon to thrive into. It already has a lot of experience in a related industry, combining that with logistics is only logical.
- whoisjuan 8y ago
  Amazon will for sure go after this industry. There's no doubt about that. But it's hard to tell how fast or aggressive are they going to pursue this opportunity.
- elvirs 8y ago
  amazon is doing a lot in this field already and unfortunately its not good news for regular folk who will be employed in that field. UPS offers highest salaries and benefits to its unionized workers and drivers. FedEx is ok with most of its drivers working as independent'owner operator' drivers. Amazon hires staffing companies and locol third party fleet companies thus providing 0 benefits and job guarantees while paying lowest salaries in the industry. Not sure why richest man in the world Bezos thinks Amazon should be paying less than $13/hr while both Apple store employees make $20/hr and up
  - tehlike 8y ago
    On fedex, you are right about independent drivers - but they also contract to independent companies to do last mile deliveries and haul. I would think amazon would do the same as Fedex, which means these local companies would be inclined to switch to amazon if they get more business from them. Alternatively, these local companies would grow their business to handle both to de-risk their business.
  - chriselles 8y ago
    I believe there is a key difference between Amazon and Apple that is worth mentioning. Amazon is largely a reseller(bar it’s in house developed products like Kindle/Alexa and store branded products) with far lower gross margins than Apple. Apple has the highest retail gross sales(and associated high margins) in the world. Many look to Apple/Google/Facebook as leaders in compensation, benefits, perks. But they are the exceptional companies that have wide Warren Buffett “moats” to protect their high margins. McDonalds and Amazon(distribution operations, not software dev)have far more in common in value proposition and business model in terms of margins/compensation than Apple and Amazon. Just my 0.02c
wuliwong 8y ago
It is interesting/surprising to me that there isn't the suggestion of auto-loading/unloading the trucks themselves. Is this one of those problems that seems pretty tractable from the outside looking in but it turns out there are some fundamental difficulties that aren't obvious at first but make it much more difficult than first imagined? I could imagine the beds of the trailers being conveyer belts themselves that would "plug in" to the system at the sorting facility. From there the automation could take over. It would be something like training the robots to play a combination of Jenga and Tetris.
- elcritch 8y ago
  That's a pretty good idea! Though my inclination was to think of a truck that dispenses (most) packages to the driver via a external hatch. Small win but possibly save a lot of bending, searching, and lifting.
  - sudouser 8y ago
    exactly. some time ago saw prototypes of packages tetris-like organized by delivery order and other ideas
- Eridrus 8y ago
  > UPS is negotiating with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to renew a five-year contract, which expires July 31. Representing 260,000 UPS drivers, sorters and other workers, the union wants UPS to hire more full-time workers to help handle the surge in packages. It has opposed technology such as autonomous vehicles and drones and is wary of projects that do work with fewer employees. > “The problem with technology is that it does ultimately streamline jobs,” says Sean O’Brien, a Teamsters leader in Boston. “It does eliminate jobs. And once they’re replaced, it’s pretty tough to get them back.”
- jstarfish 8y ago
  It will be a sad day for a lot of people when UPS moves to automation. Theyre one of the only companies left that still supports the 20th-century idioms of corporate loyalty-- with only a high school degree, you can start as a truck sorter and work your way up to a vaunted driver or stationmaster position over the course of your career. Robots might improve a few things though, like safety. If they can not only account for spatial positioning but also weight, automatons might ensure trucks arent over- or unevenly-loaded.
elvirs 8y ago
the article talks about UPS as an old outdated and lagging behind its main competitor FedEx while in my experience as a regular shipper I have to say UPS is a lot more reliable with its delivery schedule and serving its shipper customers needs.
- pests 8y ago
  I'm drawing a blank to which company but this reminds me of when a huge worldwide shipping company was hit with WannaCry and did everything by paper. The loss of efficiency was way less than they expected. They did have to spend weeks though fixing containers sent to the wrong location.
  - AmVess 8y ago
    That would be Maersk.
    - pests 8y ago
      Oh yes! Thank you.
  - elvirs 8y ago
    human error is a bitch. happens all the time and cant really blame people. happens to everyone unfortunately but costs a lot.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  The article seems to be missing a lot of details. FedEx ground has a more modern capital plant because they bought an awful carrier and just completed a multi billion dollar capital program to build out facilities. It also doesn’t mention that Fedex operates two companies ground and express. Most of the B2B stuff is via FedEx express. IMO the actual information here is that UPS approached the market based on their long term plan and maximized utilization of their capital investments. Now they’re looking to invest in modernization. The question is, was it smarter to stay the course, learn from Fedex’s experience and lock into tech at a lower price, or should they have scrambled?
kevan 8y ago
>Representing 260,000 UPS drivers, sorters and other workers, the union wants UPS to hire more full-time workers to help handle the surge in packages. It has opposed technology such as autonomous vehicles and drones and is wary of projects that do work with fewer employees. This isn't tenable for the company. The union might be able to stall automation in UPS for a few years, but it'll end with UPS being unable to compete with its competitors. At that point UPS will have a lot more leverage in union negotiations because the alternative will be bankruptcy and everyone losing their jobs. Hopefully union leadership adopts a longer-term view before then.
- gonzo41 8y ago
  That type of automation will probably knock out 1 in 5 jobs, or more. The workforce will change. And those who don't move up the value chain (become robot technicians and programmers) will be pushed out. I totally sympathize with the union and understand it's motivations. When things like healthcare are linked to having a job in America, replacing people with machines is rough.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    The automation will impact the ground facility guys, who are low seniority chum whom a union will typically sacrifice. My guess is that they overutilize seasonal/temp people and understaff later in the year from the unions pov.
  - icelancer 8y ago
    Even if it does eliminate 20% of jobs (that number is way too high), opposing it in the short-run won't solve anything permanently, as the GP said. Then when UPS is losing money and facing layoffs, the leverage will be massive. The union needs to adopt a long-term strategy or risk getting destroyed 5-10 years down the road.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Amazon, with all of its technological and operations might, is pathetically terrible at their own last mile delivery operations (I'm going to discount them hauling trailers from distribution centers to USPS sort facilities; anyone can do that). To displace UPS and Fedex, you would require immense amounts of capital for your delivery network, and staff properly compensated and treated well for quality work (ie a union or benefits of sufficient quality, a union isn't required). Arm chair "logistics experts" should go sling packages for a few weeks to see what it takes to compete with real operations before declaring existing operations dead if they don't "disrupt themselves". UPS, Fedex, and USPS aren't going anywhere.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
exabrial 8y ago
This is largely in part to the same reason New York's subways are stuck in the 20th century: Unions. While they serve a vital function to prevent labor abuse, nowadays they are abused to prevent innovation.
- nhaehnle 8y ago
  The interesting thing from a German perspective is that over here, unions seem to have a much more positive influence on business decisions. I wonder where the difference is coming from.
  - occamrazor 8y ago
    In Germany union representatives regularly participate to management meetings. Moreover the labour union system is completely different: unions represent all workers, and in each company there are usually different unions.
  - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
    If some unions are a tool of organized crime, I would expect them to be a source of hard-to-explain inefficiency.
- Aloha 8y ago
  Unions are s small part of the problem at UPS - the smallest part arguably - and NYMTA, they're a bigger part of the problem, but not anywhere near all of it. There is currently no technology that would allow UPS to fully automate, nor would even gain enough efficiencies that would repay the investments needed. The amusing thing to me is - now is probably the right time to fully automate sorting, the technology is much more mature and will likely have a longer lifetime before replacement, than the technology FedEx just installed. NYMTA, could fully automate - but as a cost greater than building new subways from scratch - the largest issue NYMTA has is a lack of local control, a lack of funding (from Albany), and the tact that if the subways - any of them - shut down for any amount of time, the city devolves to gridlock. Complicating factors for MTA are, outright corruption, an indifferent management, regulation that makes construction difficult, and a top down safety culture - that prioritizes eliminating the /appearance/ of risk, over reducing realistic risk.
adrianhel 8y ago
Subscribe to read. Downvoting.
- dang 8y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 Users often post workarounds in the threads, as they did above.
jmharvey 8y ago
The thing I find curious about UPS/Fedex operations is that they're still oriented around a "make deliveries during business hours" model that made sense decades ago when businesses were overnighting documents to each other, but makes less sense when traffic is largely goods ordered online and shipped to residences. To an outsider, it seems like door tags/missed deliveries/redeliveries must be inefficient, expensive, and almost entirely predictable for the carrier, while also being a major driver of customer pain.
- heartbreak 8y ago
  In my mid-Atlantic market, UPS Ground does residential deliveries exclusively between 5-8pm and business deliveries during normal business hours.
- DrJokepu 8y ago
  As a business owner I use UPS quite a bit to get things delivered to clients etc (during business hours) and I don't think twice about paying $70 for next day air delivery. I doubt online stores pay anything like that.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- spenczar5 8y ago
  I wonder whether UPS’s business really is mostly residential. The business side is invisible to me - it could be huge, I don’t know. Does anyone have data?
  - the-dude 8y ago
    It is huge. I consider UPS business orientation a plus : I know when they show up. Tracking is the best of the bunch. For example : Farnell ships with UPS. Farnell is a mostly B2B electronic components distributor. EU experience from good to bad : UPS, Fedex, DPD, TNT and then DHL which is the worst from a receivers perspective. edit: I should add, running a business from a residential location.
mrtksn 8y ago
I always wonder, why unionised workers won't pursue investment in technology that will make their jobs obsolete rather than fighting a futile war against the technology? If you're an organisation of hundreds of thousands of workers, you probably can afford to invest in startups that can replace the jobs of the people you're representing. What's better, you already have a relationship with the client and your members have the know-how of the tasks and the business that's about to get automated. If the investments fail, you keep your jobs. If your investments succeed, you no longer need to work to make living.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  With shipping - there will be always be tons of manual work to do. It will just change in nature.
  - mrtksn 8y ago
    Yes but wouldn't be great for the workers if they had a stake in the company that makes the conveyor belt for example? We all have seen the graphs showing that the efficiency in the businesses increased dramatically while the salaries stagnated. Maybe they should pursue investment unions that are aiming to replace their jobs with technology so that they can take the rewards of the increased efficiency.
- gboudrias 8y ago
  In a way, you're suggesting a cynical though (arguably) realistic stance. Which is logical, but a hard sell in the very political world of unions. A lot of these people have an emotional attachment to their job, or at least the idea of having a job. Edit: In other words, you can't put a price on purpose.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  A lot of those automations require capital, which only the business in question will be able to provide at a reasonable cost.
  - 8y ago
notananthem 8y ago
They need to standardize package sizes. USPS, UPS, everyone. I know this would be ridiculous, but what about essentially milkcrate-like containers of standard stackable sizes with fixed rates for residential bullshit. Residential shipping has to be the biggest fucking pain in the ass- I know I've done it. I moved via UPS one time, packaging tons of random 3' square boxes with shit unpadded, the delivery people actually taped them back closed with my stuff inside. You should never accept those. Basically, have a few sizes of really over-built injection molded milkcrates with honeycomb for impact protection, and customers bring a box of crap to the store and pick out their crate, put all their stuff in, set it on the conveyor with their name/payment/etc and it rolls up to the front. A machine inflates a tight plastic bladder which secures the material inside, closes it, charges you and spits out a receipt. There shouldn't be customer service. If you need to pick up your package, scan your ID or slip or something. If you have an address problem, you use the computer to ensure you're shipping it to the right place. Declarations are handled, and an impact resistant box would probably do well for all the stupid assholes shipping batteries, liquids, dead animals etc. I know this wouldn't work for a lot of reasons and people would just keep the boxes, but maybe you can keep them from being taken out of the store, like you pull your cardboard box out of it or something. You get to fill a cardboard box that's barely taped shut and that HAS to fit in the plastic crate. You can't take the crate home.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  > I know this wouldn't work for a lot of reasons and people would just keep the boxes, Actually I think this could work if you offered some money for the empty crates, like with bottle deposits. You could keep the crates if you needed them, but you could also save them until you had a carload to take to the UPS Store and get some cash. If the fee were low enough, the shipping companies would still be saving money over buying zillions of cardboard boxes per year. I'm not sure if the economics work out, but if we standardized and got USPS/UPS/FedEx/Amazon all on board, it could work.
  - whoopdedo 8y ago
    I've often wondered why UPS doesn't pick up boxes for recycling. How many trucks are half-empty after making a round of deliveries?
richardfeynman 8y ago
I wonder if Amazon will buy them.
- LateRuin 8y ago
  Why would Amazon want to inherit UPS's union and pension liabilities? Easier to just start from scratch with the latest tech and zero legacy costs.
mistrial9 8y ago
anecdotal background says -- pre-IPO the UPS company aggressively fired union employees and promoted low-power middle managers by the thousands, then got the IPO with a promise to expand to EU and Middle East, and then with loads of cash, blundered through execution with multiple public errors and mismanagement.
calimac 8y ago
The Union Cottle's the UPS employee base and make it more difficult. UPS's management is one step above GM 2005. The are old school not that motivated to innovate and build lean.
achow 8y ago
Non paywall link: https://outline.com/xD5B8c https://outline.com/xD5B8c
amelius 8y ago
They should try to become Amazon, or they will be made obsolete by them. The direction they should take is to bind third party sellers, and to set up a web retailing website.
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yeukhon 8y ago
If you are not familiar with how big players like Fedex (or UPS) run their operations, go check out https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDctEAS0fw_zzOnWDJA7dZ47Ne1UYEfdH https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDctEAS0fw_zzOnWDJA7d...
ljw1001 8y ago
Can someone please label WSJ articles as "paywall" in the title?

183 points by dsr12 8y ago

neonate 8y ago

http://archive.li/5YnbM http://archive.li/5YnbM

hotdog97 8y ago
Is there a list of which paywalled sites this awesome tool is capable of handling? (Seems to be the same as archive.is)
- 21 8y ago
  I think we should have a website or something where you put in a pay-walled URL, and it does whatever trick or redirects you where-ever you can see it. Like SciHub basically.
  - Baeocystin 8y ago
    The Chrome extension Unpaywall does exactly that. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpaywall/iplffkdpngmdjhlpjmppncnlhomiipha https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpaywall/iplffkdp... It doesn't bat 1.000, of course, but it is successful often enough to be useful.
  - hotdog97 8y ago
    I was thinking of creating something similar for all of those US news sites that have blocked EU-based readers from accessing their sites out of a mostly unfounded panic. (PS: love your HN username.)
    - briandear 8y ago
      So all those US sites are just ignorant? They didn’t have lawyers actually advising them? They just unilaterally shut off access to millions of people out of an abundance of caution? “Unfounded panic” isn’t a business strategy and any non-trivial business is going to operate from legal advice. Obviously, the risk is real enough: the threat of 5% of global earnings is a pretty big incentive to be extremely cautious when dealing with an EU that has a huge financial incentive to go after large American companies. I wouldn’t run my business with the “hope” that regulators are benevolent. If the media publishes a story critical of a country’s government, what’s to stop them from using GDPR as the basis for a very expensive witchhunt? Even if you have done everything correctly, there is still a significant compliance risk. It isn’t the compliance itself that is problematic — it’s the compliance risk you subject yourself to when serving Europe. Given most news organizations are hanging by a thread financially, one bit of back luck from an aggressive regulator could destroy the business. It’s the same reason many European banks have refused to service American customers: the FATCA compliance risk.
      - hotdog97 8y ago
        > They didn’t have lawyers actually advising them? They just unilaterally shut off access to millions of people out of an abundance of caution? Those two statements are not mutually exclusive. I think they did have lawyers who advised them. They concluded that the potential risk is larger than the gain (in ads - europeans love their privacy and adblockers; and ad rates are comparatively quite low outside of the UK). One, I think they should have hired european lawyers for this. Two, comparing with the FATCA risk is amusing.
  - briandear 8y ago
    How do the writers of the articles get paid if everyone bypasses paywalls? They aren’t like musicians that make most of their money touring and their recorded music is more of a show-marketing tool. Most writers are almost anonymous. I’m just having a hard time understanding the ethics of this.
    - hotdog97 8y ago
      Well, if a particular news site blocks europeans I would guess they are not expecting any kind of revenue from there. I find it hard argue against a service that unblocks this kind of news site for europeans from an ethical POV. Copyright law is of course different, but it was you who introduced the ethics aspect.
- sudouser 8y ago
  check outline.com
  - hotdog97 8y ago
    That site does work great with WSJ.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tofu8 8y ago
I can't access this link (ERR_NAME_RESOLUTION_FAILED). Anyone else having the same problem?
- curiousgal 8y ago
  You're having DNS issues.
- __float 8y ago
  1.1.1.1 is giving SERVFAIL but 8.8.8.8 is handling it just fine.
tyfon 8y ago
I really want a setting on my HN account to filter out paywalled articles from the front page.
- LateRuin 8y ago
  With any WSJ article, just open twitter and copy&paste the title. Any link to WSJ from twitter will get around the paywall -- even tweets from the official WSJ twitter account. here ya go: https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1007786098859413504 https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1007786098859413504
ajnin 8y ago
For some reason this links redirects me to a blog article about a dispute between archive.is and their registrar. Replacing .li by .is works.

tehlike 8y ago

This is an opportunity for Amazon to thrive into. It already has a lot of experience in a related industry, combining that with logistics is only logical.

whoisjuan 8y ago
Amazon will for sure go after this industry. There's no doubt about that. But it's hard to tell how fast or aggressive are they going to pursue this opportunity.
elvirs 8y ago
amazon is doing a lot in this field already and unfortunately its not good news for regular folk who will be employed in that field. UPS offers highest salaries and benefits to its unionized workers and drivers. FedEx is ok with most of its drivers working as independent'owner operator' drivers. Amazon hires staffing companies and locol third party fleet companies thus providing 0 benefits and job guarantees while paying lowest salaries in the industry. Not sure why richest man in the world Bezos thinks Amazon should be paying less than $13/hr while both Apple store employees make $20/hr and up
- tehlike 8y ago
  On fedex, you are right about independent drivers - but they also contract to independent companies to do last mile deliveries and haul. I would think amazon would do the same as Fedex, which means these local companies would be inclined to switch to amazon if they get more business from them. Alternatively, these local companies would grow their business to handle both to de-risk their business.
- chriselles 8y ago
  I believe there is a key difference between Amazon and Apple that is worth mentioning. Amazon is largely a reseller(bar it’s in house developed products like Kindle/Alexa and store branded products) with far lower gross margins than Apple. Apple has the highest retail gross sales(and associated high margins) in the world. Many look to Apple/Google/Facebook as leaders in compensation, benefits, perks. But they are the exceptional companies that have wide Warren Buffett “moats” to protect their high margins. McDonalds and Amazon(distribution operations, not software dev)have far more in common in value proposition and business model in terms of margins/compensation than Apple and Amazon. Just my 0.02c

wuliwong 8y ago

It is interesting/surprising to me that there isn't the suggestion of auto-loading/unloading the trucks themselves. Is this one of those problems that seems pretty tractable from the outside looking in but it turns out there are some fundamental difficulties that aren't obvious at first but make it much more difficult than first imagined? I could imagine the beds of the trailers being conveyer belts themselves that would "plug in" to the system at the sorting facility. From there the automation could take over. It would be something like training the robots to play a combination of Jenga and Tetris.

elcritch 8y ago
That's a pretty good idea! Though my inclination was to think of a truck that dispenses (most) packages to the driver via a external hatch. Small win but possibly save a lot of bending, searching, and lifting.
- sudouser 8y ago
  exactly. some time ago saw prototypes of packages tetris-like organized by delivery order and other ideas
Eridrus 8y ago
> UPS is negotiating with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to renew a five-year contract, which expires July 31. Representing 260,000 UPS drivers, sorters and other workers, the union wants UPS to hire more full-time workers to help handle the surge in packages. It has opposed technology such as autonomous vehicles and drones and is wary of projects that do work with fewer employees. > “The problem with technology is that it does ultimately streamline jobs,” says Sean O’Brien, a Teamsters leader in Boston. “It does eliminate jobs. And once they’re replaced, it’s pretty tough to get them back.”
jstarfish 8y ago
It will be a sad day for a lot of people when UPS moves to automation. Theyre one of the only companies left that still supports the 20th-century idioms of corporate loyalty-- with only a high school degree, you can start as a truck sorter and work your way up to a vaunted driver or stationmaster position over the course of your career. Robots might improve a few things though, like safety. If they can not only account for spatial positioning but also weight, automatons might ensure trucks arent over- or unevenly-loaded.

elvirs 8y ago

the article talks about UPS as an old outdated and lagging behind its main competitor FedEx while in my experience as a regular shipper I have to say UPS is a lot more reliable with its delivery schedule and serving its shipper customers needs.

pests 8y ago
I'm drawing a blank to which company but this reminds me of when a huge worldwide shipping company was hit with WannaCry and did everything by paper. The loss of efficiency was way less than they expected. They did have to spend weeks though fixing containers sent to the wrong location.
- AmVess 8y ago
  That would be Maersk.
  - pests 8y ago
    Oh yes! Thank you.
- elvirs 8y ago
  human error is a bitch. happens all the time and cant really blame people. happens to everyone unfortunately but costs a lot.
Spooky23 8y ago
The article seems to be missing a lot of details. FedEx ground has a more modern capital plant because they bought an awful carrier and just completed a multi billion dollar capital program to build out facilities. It also doesn’t mention that Fedex operates two companies ground and express. Most of the B2B stuff is via FedEx express. IMO the actual information here is that UPS approached the market based on their long term plan and maximized utilization of their capital investments. Now they’re looking to invest in modernization. The question is, was it smarter to stay the course, learn from Fedex’s experience and lock into tech at a lower price, or should they have scrambled?

kevan 8y ago

>Representing 260,000 UPS drivers, sorters and other workers, the union wants UPS to hire more full-time workers to help handle the surge in packages. It has opposed technology such as autonomous vehicles and drones and is wary of projects that do work with fewer employees. This isn't tenable for the company. The union might be able to stall automation in UPS for a few years, but it'll end with UPS being unable to compete with its competitors. At that point UPS will have a lot more leverage in union negotiations because the alternative will be bankruptcy and everyone losing their jobs. Hopefully union leadership adopts a longer-term view before then.

gonzo41 8y ago
That type of automation will probably knock out 1 in 5 jobs, or more. The workforce will change. And those who don't move up the value chain (become robot technicians and programmers) will be pushed out. I totally sympathize with the union and understand it's motivations. When things like healthcare are linked to having a job in America, replacing people with machines is rough.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  The automation will impact the ground facility guys, who are low seniority chum whom a union will typically sacrifice. My guess is that they overutilize seasonal/temp people and understaff later in the year from the unions pov.
- icelancer 8y ago
  Even if it does eliminate 20% of jobs (that number is way too high), opposing it in the short-run won't solve anything permanently, as the GP said. Then when UPS is losing money and facing layoffs, the leverage will be massive. The union needs to adopt a long-term strategy or risk getting destroyed 5-10 years down the road.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Amazon, with all of its technological and operations might, is pathetically terrible at their own last mile delivery operations (I'm going to discount them hauling trailers from distribution centers to USPS sort facilities; anyone can do that). To displace UPS and Fedex, you would require immense amounts of capital for your delivery network, and staff properly compensated and treated well for quality work (ie a union or benefits of sufficient quality, a union isn't required). Arm chair "logistics experts" should go sling packages for a few weeks to see what it takes to compete with real operations before declaring existing operations dead if they don't "disrupt themselves". UPS, Fedex, and USPS aren't going anywhere.

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exabrial 8y ago

This is largely in part to the same reason New York's subways are stuck in the 20th century: Unions. While they serve a vital function to prevent labor abuse, nowadays they are abused to prevent innovation.

nhaehnle 8y ago
The interesting thing from a German perspective is that over here, unions seem to have a much more positive influence on business decisions. I wonder where the difference is coming from.
- occamrazor 8y ago
  In Germany union representatives regularly participate to management meetings. Moreover the labour union system is completely different: unions represent all workers, and in each company there are usually different unions.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  If some unions are a tool of organized crime, I would expect them to be a source of hard-to-explain inefficiency.
Aloha 8y ago
Unions are s small part of the problem at UPS - the smallest part arguably - and NYMTA, they're a bigger part of the problem, but not anywhere near all of it. There is currently no technology that would allow UPS to fully automate, nor would even gain enough efficiencies that would repay the investments needed. The amusing thing to me is - now is probably the right time to fully automate sorting, the technology is much more mature and will likely have a longer lifetime before replacement, than the technology FedEx just installed. NYMTA, could fully automate - but as a cost greater than building new subways from scratch - the largest issue NYMTA has is a lack of local control, a lack of funding (from Albany), and the tact that if the subways - any of them - shut down for any amount of time, the city devolves to gridlock. Complicating factors for MTA are, outright corruption, an indifferent management, regulation that makes construction difficult, and a top down safety culture - that prioritizes eliminating the /appearance/ of risk, over reducing realistic risk.

adrianhel 8y ago

Subscribe to read. Downvoting.

dang 8y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 Users often post workarounds in the threads, as they did above.

jmharvey 8y ago

The thing I find curious about UPS/Fedex operations is that they're still oriented around a "make deliveries during business hours" model that made sense decades ago when businesses were overnighting documents to each other, but makes less sense when traffic is largely goods ordered online and shipped to residences. To an outsider, it seems like door tags/missed deliveries/redeliveries must be inefficient, expensive, and almost entirely predictable for the carrier, while also being a major driver of customer pain.

heartbreak 8y ago
In my mid-Atlantic market, UPS Ground does residential deliveries exclusively between 5-8pm and business deliveries during normal business hours.
DrJokepu 8y ago
As a business owner I use UPS quite a bit to get things delivered to clients etc (during business hours) and I don't think twice about paying $70 for next day air delivery. I doubt online stores pay anything like that.
- deleted 8y ago
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spenczar5 8y ago
I wonder whether UPS’s business really is mostly residential. The business side is invisible to me - it could be huge, I don’t know. Does anyone have data?
- the-dude 8y ago
  It is huge. I consider UPS business orientation a plus : I know when they show up. Tracking is the best of the bunch. For example : Farnell ships with UPS. Farnell is a mostly B2B electronic components distributor. EU experience from good to bad : UPS, Fedex, DPD, TNT and then DHL which is the worst from a receivers perspective. edit: I should add, running a business from a residential location.

mrtksn 8y ago

I always wonder, why unionised workers won't pursue investment in technology that will make their jobs obsolete rather than fighting a futile war against the technology? If you're an organisation of hundreds of thousands of workers, you probably can afford to invest in startups that can replace the jobs of the people you're representing. What's better, you already have a relationship with the client and your members have the know-how of the tasks and the business that's about to get automated. If the investments fail, you keep your jobs. If your investments succeed, you no longer need to work to make living.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
With shipping - there will be always be tons of manual work to do. It will just change in nature.
- mrtksn 8y ago
  Yes but wouldn't be great for the workers if they had a stake in the company that makes the conveyor belt for example? We all have seen the graphs showing that the efficiency in the businesses increased dramatically while the salaries stagnated. Maybe they should pursue investment unions that are aiming to replace their jobs with technology so that they can take the rewards of the increased efficiency.
gboudrias 8y ago
In a way, you're suggesting a cynical though (arguably) realistic stance. Which is logical, but a hard sell in the very political world of unions. A lot of these people have an emotional attachment to their job, or at least the idea of having a job. Edit: In other words, you can't put a price on purpose.
ddebernardy 8y ago
A lot of those automations require capital, which only the business in question will be able to provide at a reasonable cost.
- 8y ago

notananthem 8y ago

They need to standardize package sizes. USPS, UPS, everyone. I know this would be ridiculous, but what about essentially milkcrate-like containers of standard stackable sizes with fixed rates for residential bullshit. Residential shipping has to be the biggest fucking pain in the ass- I know I've done it. I moved via UPS one time, packaging tons of random 3' square boxes with shit unpadded, the delivery people actually taped them back closed with my stuff inside. You should never accept those. Basically, have a few sizes of really over-built injection molded milkcrates with honeycomb for impact protection, and customers bring a box of crap to the store and pick out their crate, put all their stuff in, set it on the conveyor with their name/payment/etc and it rolls up to the front. A machine inflates a tight plastic bladder which secures the material inside, closes it, charges you and spits out a receipt. There shouldn't be customer service. If you need to pick up your package, scan your ID or slip or something. If you have an address problem, you use the computer to ensure you're shipping it to the right place. Declarations are handled, and an impact resistant box would probably do well for all the stupid assholes shipping batteries, liquids, dead animals etc. I know this wouldn't work for a lot of reasons and people would just keep the boxes, but maybe you can keep them from being taken out of the store, like you pull your cardboard box out of it or something. You get to fill a cardboard box that's barely taped shut and that HAS to fit in the plastic crate. You can't take the crate home.

Analemma_ 8y ago
> I know this wouldn't work for a lot of reasons and people would just keep the boxes, Actually I think this could work if you offered some money for the empty crates, like with bottle deposits. You could keep the crates if you needed them, but you could also save them until you had a carload to take to the UPS Store and get some cash. If the fee were low enough, the shipping companies would still be saving money over buying zillions of cardboard boxes per year. I'm not sure if the economics work out, but if we standardized and got USPS/UPS/FedEx/Amazon all on board, it could work.
- whoopdedo 8y ago
  I've often wondered why UPS doesn't pick up boxes for recycling. How many trucks are half-empty after making a round of deliveries?

richardfeynman 8y ago

I wonder if Amazon will buy them.

LateRuin 8y ago
Why would Amazon want to inherit UPS's union and pension liabilities? Easier to just start from scratch with the latest tech and zero legacy costs.

mistrial9 8y ago

anecdotal background says -- pre-IPO the UPS company aggressively fired union employees and promoted low-power middle managers by the thousands, then got the IPO with a promise to expand to EU and Middle East, and then with loads of cash, blundered through execution with multiple public errors and mismanagement.

calimac 8y ago

The Union Cottle's the UPS employee base and make it more difficult. UPS's management is one step above GM 2005. The are old school not that motivated to innovate and build lean.

achow 8y ago

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amelius 8y ago

They should try to become Amazon, or they will be made obsolete by them. The direction they should take is to bind third party sellers, and to set up a web retailing website.

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