<story><title>In Final Holiday Push, UPS Grabs Its Accountants to Deliver Packages</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-final-holiday-push-ups-grabs-its-accountants-to-deliver-packages-1514040922</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>drakenot</author><text>I worked as a &amp;quot;UPS Delivery Helper&amp;quot; in college during the holiday breaks.  I was assigned to a UPS truck and my job was to take the packages from the truck to the door while the driver scanned the next package to be delivered so he never had to leave the truck.&lt;p&gt;I remember that as we got close to Christmas the packages were packed in the trucks so tight that there was little rhyme or reason to their placement.  The entire &amp;quot;aisle&amp;quot; in the back of the truck was filled to the brim.  We would literally just choose a random package that was blocking the aisle and go deliver it, often driving back and forth across our area in a very roundabout manner.  Once the aisle got cleared and we could actually get to the shelves, the packages could be delivered in a more sane manner.&lt;p&gt;It always struck me as terribly inefficient but perhaps to UPS the last mile doesn&amp;#x27;t matter as much because the driver is basically committed to getting his route clear no matter how long it takes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hbosch</author><text>Adding my experience. I was a driver helper at one point too, and my driver would deliver all the commercial&amp;#x2F;business packages first, then park in an empty area (residential side street or parking lot) and we would handsort the remaining packages along his personally directed route. We&amp;#x27;d unload each package one by one, the driver chucking them to me from inside the truck with the words &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;left&amp;quot; and I&amp;#x27;d form two piles depending on the word, then I&amp;#x27;d toss them back. First one pile, then the next. He had his route memorized and after reloading delivery was super efficient.&lt;p&gt;It blew my mind that we wasted an hour or so every day just to optimize something that could be automatic via a machine or at least implemented by the loaders... Sad to see it still hasn&amp;#x27;t changed.</text></comment>
<story><title>In Final Holiday Push, UPS Grabs Its Accountants to Deliver Packages</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-final-holiday-push-ups-grabs-its-accountants-to-deliver-packages-1514040922</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>drakenot</author><text>I worked as a &amp;quot;UPS Delivery Helper&amp;quot; in college during the holiday breaks.  I was assigned to a UPS truck and my job was to take the packages from the truck to the door while the driver scanned the next package to be delivered so he never had to leave the truck.&lt;p&gt;I remember that as we got close to Christmas the packages were packed in the trucks so tight that there was little rhyme or reason to their placement.  The entire &amp;quot;aisle&amp;quot; in the back of the truck was filled to the brim.  We would literally just choose a random package that was blocking the aisle and go deliver it, often driving back and forth across our area in a very roundabout manner.  Once the aisle got cleared and we could actually get to the shelves, the packages could be delivered in a more sane manner.&lt;p&gt;It always struck me as terribly inefficient but perhaps to UPS the last mile doesn&amp;#x27;t matter as much because the driver is basically committed to getting his route clear no matter how long it takes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>themodelplumber</author><text>I wondered about this. A truck was doing the weirdest little pattern around our neighborhood recently. There were two men inside, one older guy doing some kind of tasks inside the van, and another who looked like an off-season track star grinning at people and running these big boxes sometimes a full block to the shipping address.</text></comment>