UPS: Handling the Christmas Crush – PARCEL Industry.

To be honest, I am in awe of UPS.
They execute with the precision of a Swiss watch.
They plan, and then they make the magic happen.
In anticipation of extraordinary Christmas volume, they treated the incoming bubble with an amazing variable cost model.
They rented storage PODS as temporary delivery nodes.
They rented golf carts and small trailers to make their rounds
They used a rented straight truck to feed the volume from the UPS terminal to the POD.
And they hired temporary employees who worked about 10 weeks, and from what I understand are not eligible for unemployment benefits now that they are no longer needed.
It was fascinating.

Read more.

A few things –

1) Parcel magazine is really good, look if you ship a lot, read it – industry publications like this are rare and useful, if you’re a maker business you are shipping geek, if you’re not REALLY in to shipping, you’re on your way out of business in some way.

2) We agree with the author of the article, that’s pretty amazing that UPS uses (and can use) “off the shelf” services and partners, rented PODs, temp workers, all to make temp delivery nodes.

As Amazon ultimately makes their own shipping services it will be interesting to see if they take this fast/nimble approach or work out something different, besides the Christmas rush what other national or worldwide event has as much volume? iPhones shipping maybe?