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The loading of the trucks requires much more dexterity than a machine would be able to deliver. Also the packages themselves would be difficult for a machine as

The loading of the trucks requires much more dexterity than a machine would be able to deliver. Also the packages themselves would be difficult for a machine as you get these huge pieces that come down the belt weighing 150 pounds and the weight isn't evenly distributed at all. In these cases we have to stop the belt and two loaders load the item quickly, and the belt is restarted. What happens when a package comes down a slide and busts open and gets over everything? This actually happens quite a bit.. one time a goats head came out of the package and blood went everywhere. Or better yet, what happens when a package accidentally has two labels instructing the package to go to two different trucks, perhaps even two separate parts of the facility? We call this a double label and it usually requires a human to sort it out. There is a lot of idiosyncrasies like this with many of UPS' jobs. Automation will come not to take the paycheck from the low wage worker, but rather from the high wage worker such as driver dispatching, human resources, etc. Those people won't be fired though, most will be reassigned to over see some drivers I would imagine. That is a tough job and those people need all the help they can get.

jononor 8y ago
The system needs to know its limitations and divert packages that cannot be handled automatically to manual handling. It is too complicated to design a system that handles 100% of cases, better aim for like 90% with well integrated fallback for the edgecases.
- russdpale 8y ago
  This is a good thought. Something like git, where the relatively complicated task of merging is handled by a human.
jcims 8y ago
Spent about a year loading and unloading at the Trabue UPS hub in Columbus back in the 90's. Everything you say is true. Unfucking the belt is something that is likely to be strictly a human endeavor for the next 20+ years. There's no way automate it with the current hub architecture and today's technology. You'd literally have to have a stadium-sized package 'cache' where all package could be unloaded to, some machine vision doohickey to characterize every package, then have a solver identify the idealized load configuration, then picker bots go out and start streaming packages in order so that some high end robot could load the trailer with 90+ percent packing efficiency (which i believe we achieved as loaders getting paid $8/hr). Then you'd still have to leave the last 8' of trailer space to handle the goats heads and exhaust pipes and all the other crazy shit that people just slap a label on and make someone else's problem. Maybe you could find a way to use air bladders or some kind of encapsulating foam to handle that, but mostly you'd just have to have a floater running from trailer to trailer to load that stuff. (internet fist bump btw)

jononor 8y ago

The system needs to know its limitations and divert packages that cannot be handled automatically to manual handling. It is too complicated to design a system that handles 100% of cases, better aim for like 90% with well integrated fallback for the edgecases.

russdpale 8y ago
This is a good thought. Something like git, where the relatively complicated task of merging is handled by a human.

jcims 8y ago

Spent about a year loading and unloading at the Trabue UPS hub in Columbus back in the 90's. Everything you say is true. Unfucking the belt is something that is likely to be strictly a human endeavor for the next 20+ years. There's no way automate it with the current hub architecture and today's technology. You'd literally have to have a stadium-sized package 'cache' where all package could be unloaded to, some machine vision doohickey to characterize every package, then have a solver identify the idealized load configuration, then picker bots go out and start streaming packages in order so that some high end robot could load the trailer with 90+ percent packing efficiency (which i believe we achieved as loaders getting paid $8/hr). Then you'd still have to leave the last 8' of trailer space to handle the goats heads and exhaust pipes and all the other crazy shit that people just slap a label on and make someone else's problem. Maybe you could find a way to use air bladders or some kind of encapsulating foam to handle that, but mostly you'd just have to have a floater running from trailer to trailer to load that stuff. (internet fist bump btw)