13 ms·

UPS and the package wars

173 points by cocacola1 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dark_star 4y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20230109122455/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/16/can-ups-still-deliver-a-middle-class-life https://web.archive.org/web/20230109122455/https://www.newyo...
voz_ 4y ago
[flagged]
- ars 4y ago
  Agreed. For example: "As Mehrotra puts it, “UPS has been the one oasis in the middle of a vast desert that is declining union membership in our country.” (Meanwhile, Amazon is in the midst of laying off more than eighteen thousand workers.)" Hu? What's the connection between these two things? Is the author not aware that the Amazon layoffs are corporate layoffs, not delivery layoffs?
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  It's like trying to emulate "normal old school" The New Yorker prose, which is usually pretty... wordy I guess (but not in a bad way!). But it ends up failling pretty hard at doing that, so it just makes the whole thing sound weird.
- paulcole 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 4y ago
    "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
version_five 4y ago
UPS has not kept up with the modern concept of B2C shipping (I'm in Canada, maybe it's different elsewhere). If I understand correctly, legacy shippers like them and fedex have global networks and are well positioned to ship spoke to spoke if you can call it that. But they're getting their grass cut by the amazon centric couriers (ours is called intelecom) that focus on hub to home delivery. I've had nothing but problems with UPS actually delivering stuff to my house, and the idea of driving to an industrial park to pick up a package at a shipping center is a joke. I've had no problems with the amazon couriers. I assume this is on the back of the employees. And I support a model where I pay the true cost of delivering stuff, meaning appropriate pay for delivery workers. But I think the writing is on the wall for UPS and other legacy carriers, and a strike is only going to accelerate that. They've already lost the goodwill of the public. Most won't even notice if the rest of their business goes to the Amazon focused couriers. The problem is what it will do to the broader shipping networks. Presumably without ups, shipping will get even more expensive and have worse service for smaller businesses
- danvoell 4y ago
  I just had this entire argument in my head today before seeing this post. But swap ups for FedEx. Amazon has the de facto service and for some reason others haven’t even tried to replicate it. If anyone wants to reverse engineer the data matrix tracking code (think Amazon packages) side of things hit me up.
  - vaidhy 4y ago
    I used to work at Amazon on transportation long time ago.. but that data matrix is not too complicated. From the last package I got, I see that the parcel got routed from BOI2 -> WA5 from the first QR code and from WA5 -> RNT9. I would guess the parcel originated from a warehouse in Boise, Idaho and moved to sort center WA5 (somewhere in washington.. I would guess Federal Way). Then it went from there to last mile delivery station RNT9 - I would guess Renton here and from there got delivered at my house. The QR codes are not the magic. The real magic are the systems that select routes (Why was WA5 was selected from BOI2) and how Amazon fills it truck for optimal utilization. There are so many processes you need to plan and execute flawlessly with a very temporary workforce. Replicating this needs a lot of cash, a lot of talent in system and process design, good local leadership, and insane focus on operational efficiency.
DollyE 4y ago
They certainly have the right to strike and argue for better compensation packages, but that will be reflected in the price of UPS shipping in a world where Amazon is currently demolishing them. Hell, even the USPS undercuts them as they run it as a jobs program for vets instead of a real business. Fedex has virtually no unions and will get a competitive advantage here. I wonder if the end results will be a temporary boost for current employees, but at the expense of new ones as UPS loses more and more market share.
sillystuff 4y ago
The article completely omitted that until 1999 UPS was an employee owned company. https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/22/business/ups-going-public-and-its-employees-hope-for-windfall.html https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/22/business/ups-going-public...
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  Very interesting! Did the current employee-owners get the big windfall they anticipated in that pre-IPO article? > Mr. Kelly said that U.P.S. needed to issue stock to the public to maintain its competitiveness against rivals like the FDX Corporation, which owns Fedex; DHL and several increasingly aggressive foreign postal services that are also planning to issue stock soon. Well... that's one story. I wonder how working conditions and salaries changed after they went from employee-ownership to public ownership... I have a guess of course.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  Thanks for posting that, that's very interesting. I'm curious as to how the 1997 strike mentioned in the article worked then. I would think that strikes in employee- owned companies would have very different dynamics than in public or closely-held private companies.
nabla9 4y ago
>The company offers old-fashioned middle-class jobs and is enjoying record profits. So why is a strike looming? Heh. Most UPS workers are working-class in traditional classification. "American middle-class" is extremely stretched concept.
- paxys 4y ago
  Working class and middle class are not mutually exclusive.
  - remram 4y ago
    Yes it is, you're making his point.
    - rcme 4y ago
      No, in the U.S., the middle class can include much of the working class. The middle class has typically included the entirety of the manufacturing sector prior to the year 2000. When people vote for politicians who say they're going to bring back manufacturing jobs, those voters aren't clamoring for lower-class wages, obviously.
      - remram 4y ago
        Yes. In America, "middle-class" is everybody if you ask them, i.e. it is an extremely stretched concept.
        rcme 4y ago
        That’s because, after WWII, you could do basically any job in the US and afford things we typically associate with the middle class, e.g. a modest home in a decent neighborhood. So everyone really was middle class.
        remram 4y ago
pico303 4y ago
Did it seem to anyone else that during the holidays, UPS prices skyrocketed? I felt like a box that would have run me $25 to ship 3 day ground a year or so ago was almost $60 this year. If this is how others felt, UPS might struggle next holiday season while USPS and Amazon thrive.
- nocoiner 4y ago
  Maybe it’s just been years since I sent an overnight envelope without my secretary’s help, but a couple months or two ago, I went to a UPS store to send a letter overnight and it was $75. Crazy. I feel like not that long ago, overnighting a letter was a $15-20 expense (as long as you weren’t opting for one of the “very first thing” delivery slots).
  - balderdash 4y ago
    If I go to a FedEx store I routinely get prices of $30 - $50 to send an overnight envelope, if I go to my corporate mailroom it’s $10-15 for the same shipment… my point being there are is a broad range of pricing regimes based on volume etc.
    - exmadscientist 4y ago
      It can get really broad, too. A former coworker who used to work for a brand you've probably heard of (if you're American) whose core business model involved/involves a ton of mostly-overnight shipping told me once that he could send a heavy package literally from one corner of the country to another for $LOTS on his own dime, $90 for 5-day ground on the company's dime, or... $8 for early overnight. Eight bucks! I don't think that even paid for the jet fuel. Guess which he chose? Shipping prices are weird.
  - exmadscientist 4y ago
    Sign up for a shipping account. It's often an immediate ~50% discount off retail, and that improves (slowly) as you ship more. At least that's how it works for FedEx. I don't know if that's just because they like keeping out the "retail riff-raff", they like having your credit card on file, that juicy "data", or what, but it works.
paxys 4y ago
That was a really good piece. I'd encourage everyone to read it in its entirety before getting the urge to comment here based on just the title (as is usually the case). While the article is expectedly one-sided, it does touch upon the changed environment in the delivery sector and labor in America in general. This is no longer a David vs Goliath contest like the last UPS strike in the 90s went. Amazon is now the Goliath. The gig economy is the Goliath. UPS itself is helpless in the face of these developments. A striking UPS driver with stable hours, a 6-figure salary, benefits and a pension/retirement fund is going to get far less sympathy from the public today than 20 years ago. But then is there any alternative other than to sit by and let their job become another Amazon or DoorDash?
- twblalock 4y ago
  If the market doesn’t sustain the kind of jobs they want, how will striking help? Striking can definitely backfire. How many UPS customers will ship with other companies during the strike? How many of them will stick with their new choice and never come back to UPS? When a market gets disrupted like this, the worst thing the incumbents can do is refuse to accept change and double down on their old model. They need to innovate and change. I know that’s not easy, but it’s the only thing that works.
  - djrobstep 4y ago
    The market is not being "disrupted" in any genuinely innovative sense, the employees are merely having their bargaining power undermined. The real solution here is sectoral collective bargaining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining
    - eru 4y ago
      Why is that a solution? If people don't want to work for UPS at the conditions and wages that the market can bear, they can move jobs. It's good for people to be able to enjoy cheap shipping.
bryanmgreen 4y ago
Anecdotally, I run a consumer goods business and UPS has set me up with a business account for volume discounts and tries to get me to use them for shipping. The irony is that I do use them for shipping, but get cheaper rates from a variety of other label providers. My UPS rep says they can't match them. Giant corporations never have your best interests top of mind.
- judge2020 4y ago
  That's because your "business account" is just a sales channel. You get discounts versus going to ups.com, but you won't get the discounts you get via label resellers because your business really doesn't matter; but if they lost a volume shipper like ShipStation or Pirateship, they'd lose overall volume to Fedex USPS etc.
bluedino 4y ago
I've never had UPS driver with no identification use their personal car to deliver a package at 9:00 at night.
- mindslight 4y ago
  UPS routinely delivers my packages after 9PM. Fedex had a phase of leaving my packages next to the road. The dodgy people in passenger vehicles tend to hang out in my driveway for a while and never seem prepared. Half the carriers stack the packages in front of my door such that it can't be opened. All the services are bad in their own ways, which seem to depend on the "ingenuity" of the individual drivers. I'm sure they're all getting the screws turned on them as much as technically possible. I will say Fedex Express seems to have retained some of its character, in the way that UPS Air has not (some of those >9PM packages have been Next Day Air 10:30AM service). The worst is being unable to reach an actual human. If I'm calling, it's not because I want to listen to a computer voice read out the tracking information. (Although one of their tracking websites has been straight up "unavailable" for months, so maybe it's not a stretch). The reward for worst offense probably goes to UPS, for delivering a crushed box that started off containing 4 gallons of oil paint, very obviously leaking everywhere. That was also at 9PM, so nobody to even try to get ahold of until the next day well after I had been forced to deal with it. I donned disposable gloves and carefully poured them into a 5 gallon bucket and got 3 free gallons of paint and 20% discount on the reship from Home Depot. I guess dealing with the fallout is the real price we pay for goods getting delivered? The sheer wastefulness continues to be obscene to me. We have such abundance that we don't even bother handling goods properly to avoid squandering them. What I really don't get is why none of these companies have tried batching deliveries onto fewer days per week. I get that they they're not in the business of storing packages, but instead of having drivers race around to do one package at each of many houses, they could make fewer stops. If the buffering would take too much room, do ingress policing that requires shippers to only ship to specific destinations on specific days. If we're going for cheapest possible rates, that seems like a straightforward optimization.
  - thewebcount 4y ago
    > The worst is being unable to reach an actual human. If I'm calling, it's not because I want to listen to a computer voice read out the tracking information. I’ve had their automated system hang up on me! I semi-regularly have to send a pre-paid box back to Apple to recycle an old device. I go to FedEx’s website to get a pick-up, and it always says that the tracking number isn’t valid. (Apple must send literally millions of these boxes a year - why would the tracking number be invalid?) I then call and the person on the phone fixes it and the package gets picked up as expected. But one day they changed their phone tree and the old options didn’t work. If you asked for a representative or agent, it would just hang up on you! I eventually figured out that you have to follow the prompts that say, “Problem with the web site” and then “something else” after that and then you get a human who can fix the problem or escalate it. But they’re clearly trying to get you to hang up and go away.
gghffguhvc 4y ago
My UPS drivers is great. I give him a nice Christmas tip. He knows my neighbors so can have them sign for things on my behalf etc. I look forward to seeing him and his big smile. Amazon drivers do an adequate job but often look stressed and burnt out. They never look me in the eye. I feel really bad for them.
- asdff 4y ago
  Amazon drivers have to pee in bottles even to this day: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z348y9/amazon-drivers-are-still-peeing-in-bottles https://www.vice.com/en/article/z348y9/amazon-drivers-are-st... It's true for warehouse workers too. They also poop in bags. I guess that's what it takes to make 130 billion in revenue per quarter.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
robk 4y ago
UPS in the UK is absolutely atrocious. The drivers are not motivated to deliver at all and there must be some externality that means no downside to failed attempts. I'd say 50% of my packages go to a crappy convenient store a mile away from home which is a huge hassle to get to and has surly staff who are very displeased to see you and make the absolute least effort. Makes UPS in the US look absolutely gold plated. I assume they must send their flunkies from Atlanta to the overseas regions if they're too incompetent to work in the US system but it's really appalling. My childhood rural UPS drivers were absolutely lovely but the UK makes me despise this carrier nearly as much as Hermes/Evri
- k33l0r 4y ago
  It's the same in Finland. There was a big blow up about it a few months ago when someone's Twitter thread[1] about it blew up online and, eventually, in the local media[2]. The drivers are given utterly unrealistic quotas and there's appears to be little incentive for packages to actually get delivered. There's also no way for a consumer to escalate delivery issues to anyone who'd actually be empowered to fix mistakes. [1]: https://twitter.com/MikkiHEL/status/1549027653906272257 https://twitter.com/MikkiHEL/status/1549027653906272257 (be warned, it's a thread with hundreds of tweets. In English, though) [2]: https://www.hs.fi/kaupunki/art-2000008955913.html https://www.hs.fi/kaupunki/art-2000008955913.html (in Finnish)
judge2020 4y ago
Maybe it's just me, but UPS in the US is much more reliable and high-quality than FedEx. For one, FedEx Delivery Manager seems to have a super old map of addresses, so a house built in 2021 couldn't be verified by their system, and in general I've had many more packages delivered to the wrong addresses (one time my parcel was delivered to Neighbor A's door, A's package to B's door, B's package to my door") or super beaten up with FedEx. It might just be class division, with the higher rates leading to lower overall volume, but that's just a hunch.
- alsodumb 4y ago
  Nah it's not just you. UPS always delivers at my door, respects signature requests, and follows the settings I set in my UPS app. It's annoying sometimes that they knock once and leave with a notice but it's still better than losing packages like FedEx.
- dmix 4y ago
  > FedEx Delivery Manager seems to have a super old map of addresses I've always been curious how Uber has lasted this long with such an awful mapping platform. But I assume it has to do with Google Maps/Waze (I've never used Bing or Apple Maps) having such an advantage over Uber that they are just years behind. Every time I've had an Uber driver that forwards locations to Google Maps I know I won't be circling the block twice, after going down two extra side roads. Up-to-date address DBs seems to be an easier problem than taxi routing though.
- Tarball10 4y ago
  UPS is staffed with union employees, FedEx Ground/Home Delivery (which is different from FedEx Express) is staffed with contractors, not even real FedEx employees.
- rewtraw 4y ago
  Same. FedEx constantly struggles to deliver packages on-time to my place, but UPS is reliable. It’s become an ongoing joke in our household and we make efforts to avoid FedEx when other options are available. DHL tends to impress me with very fast international shipments, but I use them infrequently.
theranfear 4y ago
I enjoyed reading the article as a former supervisor of UPS. It's funny how apt some of the descriptions were from my own experience while working there. I've come to the belief that most low/tight margin jobs come with the peril that you just have to eat "you know what". I think part of my frustration when working there was the performance numbers that you have to run were unrealistic. The performance is broken down into (packages per hour) / total hours. Meaning that you need to have people loading at a rate of essentially ~450 packages per hour per person. The pressure is always on for you to get your work force moving to hit an almost physically impossible production rate. Your tactics are really one of two things which is to try to 'cut' down the work force to reduce hours or to yell that they're going too slow. In some ways this always made me feel pretty lousy because I like to treat humans with respect. Now the question is what happens when supervisors don't meet their production quotas? You get written up or in my case you write yourself up, then you get dressed down by your boss, and if you're really taking a lot of aggro, your boss's boss. It is incredibly easy to get written up, everyone I knew would constantly be written up for small things. The methods which is mentioned in the article is literal instructions on how to safely do your job if you could physically adhere to them while maintaining production would actually be really great because they're pretty thoughtful, however, it's easy to cut corners and do things that speed you up slightly at the cost of increasing injury. One thing that would be really great for my production is small packages because smaller packages = more pph which means less boss aggro. One thought that I've had is that Amazon gives all UPS the junk packages which we would call large cube or irregulars which were either exceptionally large boxes or super heavy boxes > 70lbs. (Btw they say you won't have to pick up more than 70lbs, that's a straight lie). Anyway wanted to give some additional perspectives.
pronlover723 4y ago
I'd like to see package delivery people get good working conditions That said, I'd also like to see law enforcement enforce double parking violations of delivery trucks, even if that means it costs more for delivery. The amazon trucks in particular in SF, really don't give a fuck who they're blocking. They'll block a main artery in the city during rush hour and they'll even block it right next to 3 open spaces meaning they could have pulled up to the curb and not blocked traffic with 15 to 40 cars piled behind them if all they'd done is pull over. I have multiple videos of this happening. I certainly have sympathy if they're getting rushed by management but I want the law enforced and management to get the message that double parking is not acceptable. Certainly not on main arteries.
Dalewyn 4y ago
I only have praise for UPS and FedEx, their employees are great and I happily use both of them as applicable. USPS employees are clearly more cheerful in the countryside, the guys working in the cities have "dead fish" eyes with no light. Something I would suggest to everyone: Get friendly with your drivers. Greet them with a smile and thank them for their work; simple signs of appreciation might seem small but they go a long way. Exchange some jokes and make small talk if they are the social type. If they look tired, see if they want a can of coca-cola or something; ask if they want to borrow the restroom if you have one available for guest use. Make sure any pet(s) don't get in the way of your drivers. To those who ship stuff out frequently: Ask your drivers if there's anything you can do beforehand to make their work easier; things like attaching/inserting shipping documents a certain way, writing the tracking number on the box somewhere, etc. To those who ship/receive high volumes: Help your drivers with loading and unloading if they're okay with it. Being a deliveryman is back breaking work, so most drivers really appreciate having extra sets of hands. We're all human, so for better or worse we're all going to treat friends better than strangers. Becoming friends with your drivers is important for everyone involved with your packages.
- tonguetrainer 4y ago
  I often pray for anyone working on my behalf, and that certainly includes delivery drivers, food processors and subcontractors. I want their work to be safe, light and joyful. Obviously there are some HN readers that will detest this suggestion, but for those who believe, please save a word or two for them.
- pksebben 4y ago
  I lived in a neighborhood where we could keep our garage open without fear of theft for a while, and we ended up keeping a mini fridge plugged in with water and red bulls and stuff for the delivery folks. it took a little while before they trusted it (understandably), but it caught on after a bit and really made for some great moments. We became pretty close with some of the folks on our route. The red bull was far and away the most popular but buying in bulk made it affordable. Fast forward, I've made a series of purchases on Ali Express and they've all started getting returned; turns out whatever system they were using screwed up our address on like six packages. I mentioned the trouble to my USPS person who we'd become familiar with due to the fridge - she asks me for the tracking numbers and said she'll see what she can do. She saved something like $350 Worth of packages that would have just been lost to the aether.
throwawaygo 4y ago
Why is there a long form article here?
bigtex 4y ago
I live in a rural area and before amazon had their own trucks I got almost all my packages from UPS. I got to know the driver, nice man, and my guardian dog got used to him. Well that was many years ago because now Amazon delivers their own packages now and it’s usually a different person every time. There delivery process is so rigid with regard how they consider the package delivered , meaning if they don’t physically occupy a certain location it won’t be considered delivered and that can’t be altered. I had to contact support and tell them to move the drop point at the gate and life was better. Unfortunately when I do get the occasional UPS package it is a woman who is always talking on the speakerphone the entire time.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

173 points by cocacola1 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

https://web.archive.org/web/20230109122455/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/16/can-ups-still-deliver-a-middle-class-life https://web.archive.org/web/20230109122455/https://www.newyo...

voz_ 4y ago

[flagged]

ars 4y ago
Agreed. For example: "As Mehrotra puts it, “UPS has been the one oasis in the middle of a vast desert that is declining union membership in our country.” (Meanwhile, Amazon is in the midst of laying off more than eighteen thousand workers.)" Hu? What's the connection between these two things? Is the author not aware that the Amazon layoffs are corporate layoffs, not delivery layoffs?
mardifoufs 4y ago
It's like trying to emulate "normal old school" The New Yorker prose, which is usually pretty... wordy I guess (but not in a bad way!). But it ends up failling pretty hard at doing that, so it just makes the whole thing sound weird.
paulcole 4y ago
[flagged]
- dang 4y ago
  "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

version_five 4y ago

UPS has not kept up with the modern concept of B2C shipping (I'm in Canada, maybe it's different elsewhere). If I understand correctly, legacy shippers like them and fedex have global networks and are well positioned to ship spoke to spoke if you can call it that. But they're getting their grass cut by the amazon centric couriers (ours is called intelecom) that focus on hub to home delivery. I've had nothing but problems with UPS actually delivering stuff to my house, and the idea of driving to an industrial park to pick up a package at a shipping center is a joke. I've had no problems with the amazon couriers. I assume this is on the back of the employees. And I support a model where I pay the true cost of delivering stuff, meaning appropriate pay for delivery workers. But I think the writing is on the wall for UPS and other legacy carriers, and a strike is only going to accelerate that. They've already lost the goodwill of the public. Most won't even notice if the rest of their business goes to the Amazon focused couriers. The problem is what it will do to the broader shipping networks. Presumably without ups, shipping will get even more expensive and have worse service for smaller businesses

danvoell 4y ago
I just had this entire argument in my head today before seeing this post. But swap ups for FedEx. Amazon has the de facto service and for some reason others haven’t even tried to replicate it. If anyone wants to reverse engineer the data matrix tracking code (think Amazon packages) side of things hit me up.
- vaidhy 4y ago
  I used to work at Amazon on transportation long time ago.. but that data matrix is not too complicated. From the last package I got, I see that the parcel got routed from BOI2 -> WA5 from the first QR code and from WA5 -> RNT9. I would guess the parcel originated from a warehouse in Boise, Idaho and moved to sort center WA5 (somewhere in washington.. I would guess Federal Way). Then it went from there to last mile delivery station RNT9 - I would guess Renton here and from there got delivered at my house. The QR codes are not the magic. The real magic are the systems that select routes (Why was WA5 was selected from BOI2) and how Amazon fills it truck for optimal utilization. There are so many processes you need to plan and execute flawlessly with a very temporary workforce. Replicating this needs a lot of cash, a lot of talent in system and process design, good local leadership, and insane focus on operational efficiency.

DollyE 4y ago

They certainly have the right to strike and argue for better compensation packages, but that will be reflected in the price of UPS shipping in a world where Amazon is currently demolishing them. Hell, even the USPS undercuts them as they run it as a jobs program for vets instead of a real business. Fedex has virtually no unions and will get a competitive advantage here. I wonder if the end results will be a temporary boost for current employees, but at the expense of new ones as UPS loses more and more market share.

sillystuff 4y ago

The article completely omitted that until 1999 UPS was an employee owned company. https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/22/business/ups-going-public-and-its-employees-hope-for-windfall.html https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/22/business/ups-going-public...

jrochkind1 4y ago
Very interesting! Did the current employee-owners get the big windfall they anticipated in that pre-IPO article? > Mr. Kelly said that U.P.S. needed to issue stock to the public to maintain its competitiveness against rivals like the FDX Corporation, which owns Fedex; DHL and several increasingly aggressive foreign postal services that are also planning to issue stock soon. Well... that's one story. I wonder how working conditions and salaries changed after they went from employee-ownership to public ownership... I have a guess of course.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Thanks for posting that, that's very interesting. I'm curious as to how the 1997 strike mentioned in the article worked then. I would think that strikes in employee- owned companies would have very different dynamics than in public or closely-held private companies.

nabla9 4y ago

>The company offers old-fashioned middle-class jobs and is enjoying record profits. So why is a strike looming? Heh. Most UPS workers are working-class in traditional classification. "American middle-class" is extremely stretched concept.

paxys 4y ago
Working class and middle class are not mutually exclusive.
- remram 4y ago
  Yes it is, you're making his point.
  - rcme 4y ago
    No, in the U.S., the middle class can include much of the working class. The middle class has typically included the entirety of the manufacturing sector prior to the year 2000. When people vote for politicians who say they're going to bring back manufacturing jobs, those voters aren't clamoring for lower-class wages, obviously.
    - remram 4y ago
      Yes. In America, "middle-class" is everybody if you ask them, i.e. it is an extremely stretched concept.
      - rcme 4y ago
        That’s because, after WWII, you could do basically any job in the US and afford things we typically associate with the middle class, e.g. a modest home in a decent neighborhood. So everyone really was middle class.
        remram 4y ago

pico303 4y ago

Did it seem to anyone else that during the holidays, UPS prices skyrocketed? I felt like a box that would have run me $25 to ship 3 day ground a year or so ago was almost $60 this year. If this is how others felt, UPS might struggle next holiday season while USPS and Amazon thrive.

nocoiner 4y ago
Maybe it’s just been years since I sent an overnight envelope without my secretary’s help, but a couple months or two ago, I went to a UPS store to send a letter overnight and it was $75. Crazy. I feel like not that long ago, overnighting a letter was a $15-20 expense (as long as you weren’t opting for one of the “very first thing” delivery slots).
- balderdash 4y ago
  If I go to a FedEx store I routinely get prices of $30 - $50 to send an overnight envelope, if I go to my corporate mailroom it’s $10-15 for the same shipment… my point being there are is a broad range of pricing regimes based on volume etc.
  - exmadscientist 4y ago
    It can get really broad, too. A former coworker who used to work for a brand you've probably heard of (if you're American) whose core business model involved/involves a ton of mostly-overnight shipping told me once that he could send a heavy package literally from one corner of the country to another for $LOTS on his own dime, $90 for 5-day ground on the company's dime, or... $8 for early overnight. Eight bucks! I don't think that even paid for the jet fuel. Guess which he chose? Shipping prices are weird.
- exmadscientist 4y ago
  Sign up for a shipping account. It's often an immediate ~50% discount off retail, and that improves (slowly) as you ship more. At least that's how it works for FedEx. I don't know if that's just because they like keeping out the "retail riff-raff", they like having your credit card on file, that juicy "data", or what, but it works.

paxys 4y ago

That was a really good piece. I'd encourage everyone to read it in its entirety before getting the urge to comment here based on just the title (as is usually the case). While the article is expectedly one-sided, it does touch upon the changed environment in the delivery sector and labor in America in general. This is no longer a David vs Goliath contest like the last UPS strike in the 90s went. Amazon is now the Goliath. The gig economy is the Goliath. UPS itself is helpless in the face of these developments. A striking UPS driver with stable hours, a 6-figure salary, benefits and a pension/retirement fund is going to get far less sympathy from the public today than 20 years ago. But then is there any alternative other than to sit by and let their job become another Amazon or DoorDash?

twblalock 4y ago
If the market doesn’t sustain the kind of jobs they want, how will striking help? Striking can definitely backfire. How many UPS customers will ship with other companies during the strike? How many of them will stick with their new choice and never come back to UPS? When a market gets disrupted like this, the worst thing the incumbents can do is refuse to accept change and double down on their old model. They need to innovate and change. I know that’s not easy, but it’s the only thing that works.
- djrobstep 4y ago
  The market is not being "disrupted" in any genuinely innovative sense, the employees are merely having their bargaining power undermined. The real solution here is sectoral collective bargaining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining
  - eru 4y ago
    Why is that a solution? If people don't want to work for UPS at the conditions and wages that the market can bear, they can move jobs. It's good for people to be able to enjoy cheap shipping.

bryanmgreen 4y ago

Anecdotally, I run a consumer goods business and UPS has set me up with a business account for volume discounts and tries to get me to use them for shipping. The irony is that I do use them for shipping, but get cheaper rates from a variety of other label providers. My UPS rep says they can't match them. Giant corporations never have your best interests top of mind.

judge2020 4y ago
That's because your "business account" is just a sales channel. You get discounts versus going to ups.com, but you won't get the discounts you get via label resellers because your business really doesn't matter; but if they lost a volume shipper like ShipStation or Pirateship, they'd lose overall volume to Fedex USPS etc.

bluedino 4y ago

I've never had UPS driver with no identification use their personal car to deliver a package at 9:00 at night.

mindslight 4y ago
UPS routinely delivers my packages after 9PM. Fedex had a phase of leaving my packages next to the road. The dodgy people in passenger vehicles tend to hang out in my driveway for a while and never seem prepared. Half the carriers stack the packages in front of my door such that it can't be opened. All the services are bad in their own ways, which seem to depend on the "ingenuity" of the individual drivers. I'm sure they're all getting the screws turned on them as much as technically possible. I will say Fedex Express seems to have retained some of its character, in the way that UPS Air has not (some of those >9PM packages have been Next Day Air 10:30AM service). The worst is being unable to reach an actual human. If I'm calling, it's not because I want to listen to a computer voice read out the tracking information. (Although one of their tracking websites has been straight up "unavailable" for months, so maybe it's not a stretch). The reward for worst offense probably goes to UPS, for delivering a crushed box that started off containing 4 gallons of oil paint, very obviously leaking everywhere. That was also at 9PM, so nobody to even try to get ahold of until the next day well after I had been forced to deal with it. I donned disposable gloves and carefully poured them into a 5 gallon bucket and got 3 free gallons of paint and 20% discount on the reship from Home Depot. I guess dealing with the fallout is the real price we pay for goods getting delivered? The sheer wastefulness continues to be obscene to me. We have such abundance that we don't even bother handling goods properly to avoid squandering them. What I really don't get is why none of these companies have tried batching deliveries onto fewer days per week. I get that they they're not in the business of storing packages, but instead of having drivers race around to do one package at each of many houses, they could make fewer stops. If the buffering would take too much room, do ingress policing that requires shippers to only ship to specific destinations on specific days. If we're going for cheapest possible rates, that seems like a straightforward optimization.
- thewebcount 4y ago
  > The worst is being unable to reach an actual human. If I'm calling, it's not because I want to listen to a computer voice read out the tracking information. I’ve had their automated system hang up on me! I semi-regularly have to send a pre-paid box back to Apple to recycle an old device. I go to FedEx’s website to get a pick-up, and it always says that the tracking number isn’t valid. (Apple must send literally millions of these boxes a year - why would the tracking number be invalid?) I then call and the person on the phone fixes it and the package gets picked up as expected. But one day they changed their phone tree and the old options didn’t work. If you asked for a representative or agent, it would just hang up on you! I eventually figured out that you have to follow the prompts that say, “Problem with the web site” and then “something else” after that and then you get a human who can fix the problem or escalate it. But they’re clearly trying to get you to hang up and go away.

gghffguhvc 4y ago

My UPS drivers is great. I give him a nice Christmas tip. He knows my neighbors so can have them sign for things on my behalf etc. I look forward to seeing him and his big smile. Amazon drivers do an adequate job but often look stressed and burnt out. They never look me in the eye. I feel really bad for them.

asdff 4y ago
Amazon drivers have to pee in bottles even to this day: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z348y9/amazon-drivers-are-still-peeing-in-bottles https://www.vice.com/en/article/z348y9/amazon-drivers-are-st... It's true for warehouse workers too. They also poop in bags. I guess that's what it takes to make 130 billion in revenue per quarter.
- deleted 4y ago
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robk 4y ago

UPS in the UK is absolutely atrocious. The drivers are not motivated to deliver at all and there must be some externality that means no downside to failed attempts. I'd say 50% of my packages go to a crappy convenient store a mile away from home which is a huge hassle to get to and has surly staff who are very displeased to see you and make the absolute least effort. Makes UPS in the US look absolutely gold plated. I assume they must send their flunkies from Atlanta to the overseas regions if they're too incompetent to work in the US system but it's really appalling. My childhood rural UPS drivers were absolutely lovely but the UK makes me despise this carrier nearly as much as Hermes/Evri

k33l0r 4y ago
It's the same in Finland. There was a big blow up about it a few months ago when someone's Twitter thread[1] about it blew up online and, eventually, in the local media[2]. The drivers are given utterly unrealistic quotas and there's appears to be little incentive for packages to actually get delivered. There's also no way for a consumer to escalate delivery issues to anyone who'd actually be empowered to fix mistakes. [1]: https://twitter.com/MikkiHEL/status/1549027653906272257 https://twitter.com/MikkiHEL/status/1549027653906272257 (be warned, it's a thread with hundreds of tweets. In English, though) [2]: https://www.hs.fi/kaupunki/art-2000008955913.html https://www.hs.fi/kaupunki/art-2000008955913.html (in Finnish)

judge2020 4y ago

Maybe it's just me, but UPS in the US is much more reliable and high-quality than FedEx. For one, FedEx Delivery Manager seems to have a super old map of addresses, so a house built in 2021 couldn't be verified by their system, and in general I've had many more packages delivered to the wrong addresses (one time my parcel was delivered to Neighbor A's door, A's package to B's door, B's package to my door") or super beaten up with FedEx. It might just be class division, with the higher rates leading to lower overall volume, but that's just a hunch.

alsodumb 4y ago
Nah it's not just you. UPS always delivers at my door, respects signature requests, and follows the settings I set in my UPS app. It's annoying sometimes that they knock once and leave with a notice but it's still better than losing packages like FedEx.
dmix 4y ago
> FedEx Delivery Manager seems to have a super old map of addresses I've always been curious how Uber has lasted this long with such an awful mapping platform. But I assume it has to do with Google Maps/Waze (I've never used Bing or Apple Maps) having such an advantage over Uber that they are just years behind. Every time I've had an Uber driver that forwards locations to Google Maps I know I won't be circling the block twice, after going down two extra side roads. Up-to-date address DBs seems to be an easier problem than taxi routing though.
Tarball10 4y ago
UPS is staffed with union employees, FedEx Ground/Home Delivery (which is different from FedEx Express) is staffed with contractors, not even real FedEx employees.
rewtraw 4y ago
Same. FedEx constantly struggles to deliver packages on-time to my place, but UPS is reliable. It’s become an ongoing joke in our household and we make efforts to avoid FedEx when other options are available. DHL tends to impress me with very fast international shipments, but I use them infrequently.

theranfear 4y ago

I enjoyed reading the article as a former supervisor of UPS. It's funny how apt some of the descriptions were from my own experience while working there. I've come to the belief that most low/tight margin jobs come with the peril that you just have to eat "you know what". I think part of my frustration when working there was the performance numbers that you have to run were unrealistic. The performance is broken down into (packages per hour) / total hours. Meaning that you need to have people loading at a rate of essentially ~450 packages per hour per person. The pressure is always on for you to get your work force moving to hit an almost physically impossible production rate. Your tactics are really one of two things which is to try to 'cut' down the work force to reduce hours or to yell that they're going too slow. In some ways this always made me feel pretty lousy because I like to treat humans with respect. Now the question is what happens when supervisors don't meet their production quotas? You get written up or in my case you write yourself up, then you get dressed down by your boss, and if you're really taking a lot of aggro, your boss's boss. It is incredibly easy to get written up, everyone I knew would constantly be written up for small things. The methods which is mentioned in the article is literal instructions on how to safely do your job if you could physically adhere to them while maintaining production would actually be really great because they're pretty thoughtful, however, it's easy to cut corners and do things that speed you up slightly at the cost of increasing injury. One thing that would be really great for my production is small packages because smaller packages = more pph which means less boss aggro. One thought that I've had is that Amazon gives all UPS the junk packages which we would call large cube or irregulars which were either exceptionally large boxes or super heavy boxes > 70lbs. (Btw they say you won't have to pick up more than 70lbs, that's a straight lie). Anyway wanted to give some additional perspectives.

pronlover723 4y ago

I'd like to see package delivery people get good working conditions That said, I'd also like to see law enforcement enforce double parking violations of delivery trucks, even if that means it costs more for delivery. The amazon trucks in particular in SF, really don't give a fuck who they're blocking. They'll block a main artery in the city during rush hour and they'll even block it right next to 3 open spaces meaning they could have pulled up to the curb and not blocked traffic with 15 to 40 cars piled behind them if all they'd done is pull over. I have multiple videos of this happening. I certainly have sympathy if they're getting rushed by management but I want the law enforced and management to get the message that double parking is not acceptable. Certainly not on main arteries.

Dalewyn 4y ago

I only have praise for UPS and FedEx, their employees are great and I happily use both of them as applicable. USPS employees are clearly more cheerful in the countryside, the guys working in the cities have "dead fish" eyes with no light. Something I would suggest to everyone: Get friendly with your drivers. Greet them with a smile and thank them for their work; simple signs of appreciation might seem small but they go a long way. Exchange some jokes and make small talk if they are the social type. If they look tired, see if they want a can of coca-cola or something; ask if they want to borrow the restroom if you have one available for guest use. Make sure any pet(s) don't get in the way of your drivers. To those who ship stuff out frequently: Ask your drivers if there's anything you can do beforehand to make their work easier; things like attaching/inserting shipping documents a certain way, writing the tracking number on the box somewhere, etc. To those who ship/receive high volumes: Help your drivers with loading and unloading if they're okay with it. Being a deliveryman is back breaking work, so most drivers really appreciate having extra sets of hands. We're all human, so for better or worse we're all going to treat friends better than strangers. Becoming friends with your drivers is important for everyone involved with your packages.

tonguetrainer 4y ago
I often pray for anyone working on my behalf, and that certainly includes delivery drivers, food processors and subcontractors. I want their work to be safe, light and joyful. Obviously there are some HN readers that will detest this suggestion, but for those who believe, please save a word or two for them.
pksebben 4y ago
I lived in a neighborhood where we could keep our garage open without fear of theft for a while, and we ended up keeping a mini fridge plugged in with water and red bulls and stuff for the delivery folks. it took a little while before they trusted it (understandably), but it caught on after a bit and really made for some great moments. We became pretty close with some of the folks on our route. The red bull was far and away the most popular but buying in bulk made it affordable. Fast forward, I've made a series of purchases on Ali Express and they've all started getting returned; turns out whatever system they were using screwed up our address on like six packages. I mentioned the trouble to my USPS person who we'd become familiar with due to the fridge - she asks me for the tracking numbers and said she'll see what she can do. She saved something like $350 Worth of packages that would have just been lost to the aether.

throwawaygo 4y ago

Why is there a long form article here?

bigtex 4y ago

I live in a rural area and before amazon had their own trucks I got almost all my packages from UPS. I got to know the driver, nice man, and my guardian dog got used to him. Well that was many years ago because now Amazon delivers their own packages now and it’s usually a different person every time. There delivery process is so rigid with regard how they consider the package delivered , meaning if they don’t physically occupy a certain location it won’t be considered delivered and that can’t be altered. I had to contact support and tell them to move the drop point at the gate and life was better. Unfortunately when I do get the occasional UPS package it is a woman who is always talking on the speakerphone the entire time.

deleted 4y ago

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