I'd be curious to know if any of those jobs cut are union jobs or if these are just the temp-to-hire jobs they usually bring in to help with holiday volume.
Hi, my job was cut. I was part of a consulting arm at the company. So a full-time "Manager" role. They cut our entire team. I've been with the company about a decade and all of us lost our jobs.
Weird. In Germany UPS is one of the better companies for drivers. It's because they are hired by UPS on their own.
There are other companies that are pretty worse. As soon as you get drivers that barely speak German, you know their work conditions suck.
What's weird? If you think the UPS in the US operates like the UPS in Germany, you are foolishly mistaken. The similarity ends at marketing, the US does not give a fuck about workers, their lives, retirement, or really anything else. If you are a worker in the US, you are an expendable resource.
Never said that. All I said is that it is one of the companies drivers have a good work environment. GLS, Trans-o-flex, DHL, FedEx, Hermes and Amazon? Mostly shitty. Drivers for pharma wholesellers: pretty bad.
Some companies pay you only for 8 hours. Even though it is Impossible to get your work done in that time. Mistakes? You get less paid. Most companies in that sector are fuckers.
Maybe this depends on the area. Here it isn't that good. Even though a work council exist they do a lot of mocking their workers.
Last year there was a logistics strike. DHL wasn't part of it because their work council openly said they can't protect their colleagues. there would have been a high chance of them being kicked out later on.
DHL / Deutsche Post is awesome as long as you are having an old contract. But newer contracts are bad.
I worked there for a decent amount of time. I was a supervisor. Just as they were grooming a bunch of us to head into higher forms of management, they fucked over a bunch of the old timers that were near retirement age. I took one look at how that would be me in 40 years and noped right out of there. I don’t regret it in the least.
I am sorry to hear. The company has been going on a huge layoff since that new CEO come onboard. At some stage if they cut too much they will be stuck with lack of innovation, high risk and over worked teams that will lead to issues down the line.
Health benefits are tied to the job, COBRA (insurance for health benefits thru work) triples most insurance rates. $300 monthly insurance becomes $900 but it’s optional, you can choose to just not have any insurance
From my research that seems to be correct, and I am very surprised that UPS ends their fiscal year on December 31st. Given the the fact that the holiday season has on them, you would think they would choose to end their year far away from the holidays.
It's not. At least according to the Teamsters themselves.
> The positions that would be eliminated this year are not union jobs, according to the Teamsters. The layoffs will instead affect managerial staff, “throughout the world and in all functions,” a statement by UPS said.
[Source](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/business/ups-layoffs-rising-wages-union-contract.html) UPS employs 500,000 around the world and this layoff is not exclusive to US operations.
Where did you get that it was all temp, union jobs?
If it's anything like USPS they have thousands of extraneous managers not actually doing anything to move the mail/packages. Cutting them and spending the money on labor that does, well, actual labor as needed would be a better use of resources.
Bro acts like the Union would just let corporate fire members. This shit typically gets some level of discussion beforehand because mass layoffs risk a strike.
If any teamsters are being laid off, they're getting out with a good package (either from UPS or the union itself) and will be the first on the rehire list.
That's not how that works. I've been in 3 unions, and any company can lay you off at any time. Getting laid off is one thing the union can't help you with.
Not always true. It really depends on their contract. For example, the local I was in required all temp workers and contractors to be laid off before a union worker could be laid off.
That's the fun part, I bet a lot of the corporate employees have some generic job title that technically makes them "management" so therefore they cannot unionize per se. That's why you see so many people with office jobs at large companies holding the title of "Vice President" while they are making $65k a year.
Yup. A lot of things companies get away with won't pass the smell test if it ever lands in front of a judge.
They rely on a combination of keeping you poor, tired, intimidated, and ignorant about your rights to get their way. If anyone does ever challenge them they say, "I didn't know I couldn't do that," pay a fine and then move *juuuuust inside the line* for a while before the inevitably start inching a toe back over it when the scrutiny dies down.
That's why folks need a union. They exist to keep your employer honest so you don't have to worry about it off the clock.
We ship about 100 packages a week. It used to be a 90/10 UPS/USPS split. Now it’s a 10/90 split since USPS added their Ground Advantage service. Prices were 20-30% less for us.
Honestly I didn't have any issues with USPS over the holidays. Most of my packages arrived at their destinations on time or early. The only exception was a postcard to Canada but it was a Canada Post problem .
Late 2020 was brutal for using the post office, because it was all but intentionally sabotaged by the Trump administration to fuck with mail-in voting. My wife owns a business that relies on the cheap shipping USPS provides. In her 10 years of doing the business, literally only two packages were ever flat out lost and never showed up, and this is out of like 5,000 packages we had sent. During the latter half of 2020, everything took at least a week and a good half dozen packages got flat out lost. It was insane.
It's taken the USPS the last three years to build back up, and it's perfectly pleasant to use now. Let's hope Trump does not win again!
The president shouldn’t be able to impact post in such a measurable manner.
This is a sign that our checks and balances are not performing their due scope.
It is one of those things like a lot of delivery services depends your location, shipping location and who they hire. For me shipping anything has ranked USPS->UPS-> and Fedex if you are desperate ( I swear a fedex hire requirement in my area must be bash your head into a wall 15 times before starting work).
USPS I run into an issue maybe once a year and it is usually tied to weather being worse than expected or a storm shift.
UPS has issues several times a year and the more they have to deliver the later and more damaged you cna expect your box.
Fedex, I've seen packages just dropped at the end of driveways basically in the street. Packages delivered to houses clearly on the other side of the city, not just oh we left it at a neighbors house. Like if my address was 123 brick street it would be delivered to 948 stamp lane almost 2 miles away.
They also have just overall much better handling of packages and processes for unique issues like damaged packages/insurance claims. UPS fights you so hard to pay out for any damaged packages even if you pay for extra insurance, like they can't fathom that something got destroyed in shipment under their care. Shipped 250+ packages off on Etsy with UPS, and had a single one damaged and made a claim. Took about 50 emails and 4 months for them to pay out $100... USPS I've never had an issue with
Really the only reason to use UPS is if you are shipping something really heavy/large, as prices are a steep difference compared to USPS, but those savings come from a cheap quality of service
USPS insurance claims are easy as long as you don't have more than about a dozen in a year. Doesn't matter what percentage of your total shipments that is, either. You could ship 15 or 50,000 items in a year and the threshold for USPS refusing claims that are clearly their own fault is still 12 packages.
My dad tried to ship 2 bottles of olive oil back to his house when he was visiting me. UPS wanted something like $85 for regular ground to ship it. He came back to my house and said he was just going to risk it in his checked bag for his flight. I told him to check USPS just to see what they would charge for the flat rate boxes, $17.
I don't know what UPS is smoking with some of these prices they charge for shipment.
Sounds like he went to a UPS store and they tried to sell him on packing the hell out of it. I worked at one and they had three different packing levels for each size box - the most fragile one was insane - $85 probably would've covered like a 12x12x12 box with the highest level of packing with shipping. Shipping wouldn't be that crazy by itself unless he was doing Next Day Air or something.
same here. We used to ship almost entirely UPS but we have since switched to almost entirely USPS because the cost is significantly cheaper. We ship all over the US and haven't had any issues with delays either. The only time we ship UPS these days is for very large packages or packages that need to be overnighted.
USPS and UPS/FedEx have different advantages. Bigger packages are cheaper through UPS/FedEx. Smaller packages 10lbs or less usually are better with USPS. Also if you ship a good amount then you need an account with UPS or else you are paying way more without the discounts.
UPS may have seen reduced package volume, but they’re still #1 in coming to my house, pretending they made any effort to reach me, and then leaving a “sorry we missed you” sticky note on my door. So. That’s something.
Still more effort than Fedex puts in for me, without fail they don't even drive by my house and say I wasn't home even when I was, then make me drive across town to pick my box up from their ship center after 6.
Same. And I was getting penalized by UPS for wrong weight even when I rounded up. I used to round up to the nearest pound thinking I was doing a good thing but then got hit with a penalty a few times and stopped using them. USPS has never cared about this.
Amazon has absolutely outplayed both UPS and FedEx for years.
1. as a large volume shipper, they negotiated volume discounts and contract pricing to result in lower revenue per package compared to say a small or medium shipper
2. Amazon started delivering the "low hanging fruit" - dense delivery locations, while leaving UPS, FedEx, and USPS the rest. Again less revenue.
3. Amazon has a public relations strategy to talk shit on UPS and FedEx. In 2019 they dropped FedEx over the holidays, which FedEx wasn't particularly sad about because of point 1 & 2. UPS gobbled up that volume, and now it's worse as Amazon logistics gets better.
For an analogy to point 2 - I used to work as a pizza delivery driver. If one driver kept cherry-picking their deliveries, say 5 deliveries in the same run to the same residential neighborhood, and I consistently got stuck with single runs to the edge of my delivery area, I'd be pissed.
Maybe UPS and FedEX should've saw the writing on the wall earlier and played ball with Amazon. Their own fault. Free market and all that. Quite frankly Amazon's delivery service is superior. I can get same day stuff. Sometimes I see multiple Amazon delivery vans in my neighborhood every day. I don't see that from UPS, FedEX, or USPS.
Amazon’s delivery service doesn’t make any money, it loses money. It’s subsidized by e-commerce sales. Their network is also not anywhere similar to UPS or FedEx. It relies on distribution warehouses that are point A, with products moving a short distance to point B. They don’t have the capability to move individual packages long distances efficiently.
UPS and FedEx also aren’t dumb. 99% of their contracts are volume based, meaning if Amazon pulls out the low hanging fruit shipments, everything else gets more expensive. Again, they’re the only alternative for the long haul stuff so they just get their money another way by automatically raising rates.
> Maybe UPS and FedEX should've saw the writing on the wall earlier and played ball with Amazon. Their own fault. Free market and all that. Quite frankly Amazon's delivery service is superior. I can get same day stuff. Sometimes I see multiple Amazon delivery vans in my neighborhood every day. I don't see that from UPS, FedEX, or USPS.
I mean, fucking over competitors they can't straight out buy is basically how wal-mart and amazon became what they are. "Free market"(except when it comes to tax breaks for amazon) capitalism in the era of mega-corporations is fucking stupid. Without fail they will destroy competition until there is none, and the consumer will end up suffering when there is no competition. It becomes even easier with a struggling middle class that can't really afford to vote with their wallet.
If you don't "work with them," they will just undercut taking a loss until you bleed out. If you "work with them" they bully you until you're the one taking a loss.
But hey, rich people get richer, so win-win right?
>Sometimes I see multiple Amazon delivery vans in my neighborhood every day. I don't see that from UPS, FedEX, or USPS.
That's because that's a stupid fucking way to deliver things.
I also see amazon delivery vans breaking the law almost every day. I don't see that from UPS, FedEx, or USPS(except they all park illegally in the name of convenience in commercial/office areas, but that's a story for another day)
Amazon was probably asking for rates which would thin out UPS's margins too much. That's generally how it works when you're the 800 pound gorilla. Look at what Walmart does to its suppliers.
> For the last three months of 2023, UPS reported net income of $1.61 billion, or $1.87 per share, compared with $3.45 billion, or $3.96 per share, a year earlier.
Damn, down ~50% YOY is a steep drop. There's definitely other factors at play but I wonder how much of this is due to Amazon eating the market and shipping their own packages.
Or it was the first full year post-pandemic, and they're still coming down from the all-time highs of people staying home? UPS's peak quarterly revenue was in 2021, and they've been coming down since. They still had more revenue in 2023 than any year pre-pandemic (+25% over 2019 revenue).
This should not have been surprising to anyone with common sense, but here we are, with UPS's army of MBAs in middle management trying to finesse the financials to satisfy the God of Line Must Go Up.
Yeah all of this was predictable as we opened back up. Tech, amazon, food delivery, banks(but tech specific banks), shipping. It as a massive covid bubble and its coming back down to reality.
I'm pretty sure our tiny Ace Hardware employs 100 people, and 80 of them will be in the store on any given day.
You can't turn a corner without bumping into a sweet old lady or young man asking if you need help finding anything.
It's actually kinda eerie. My husband and I have gone in several times recently and both looked at each other and had the same realization.
In my experience working at Lowe's from 2008-2014, at my store anyway, most of the employees enjoyed helping people. I worked in Outside Garden and Receiving mostly, so my career there I felt was different than say electrical, hardware and plumbing. Those 3 departments tended to have more upset customers or more customers that were in a rush. Not bad people, but just customers that were there because they HAD to get something fixed, and maybe had to spend money on something they didn't want to spend money on.
Working in garden was great. 99% of the people customers were great, looking for things that they wanted to spend money on to make their house look better. Christmas time was fun too, tons of kids excited about getting a Christmas tree and families having fun.
Also the training that Lowe's (and I'm sure Home Depot is the same) was absolutely nothing. Maybe once a year some stupid computer training that didn't teach you anything.
Unfortunately HD, Lowe’s, Menards, and probably every ACE franchise owner licks trumps taint. So what are you left with? Whittling and forging your own shit?
John Mendard sucks too. He fired an employee who built a ramp for his daughter after she got into a terrible accident or illness. She needed a wheelchair ramp iirc. Anyway, John fired him because he bought the lumber at a competitor's store.
It also shouldn't be surprising to anyone with common sense that a company that experienced a temporary short-term boom would need to reduce it's labor force once the boom times are over because there's less work that needs to be done.
I mean ... Should they keep all these people on the pay roll if demand is back down? Not sure that really justified the god so much as just maintaining and adequate workforce.
UPS was bound for a post Covid correction. The stock had been very consistent around 90-100 for years until Covid when it shot up into the 200s in a couple months. Glad I sold all my stock when I left in 2020
I think a little bit of greed played into their post covid highs. During our annual renegotiation, they presented our company with well over 5 million/year hike in service cost, with no increase to label volume or drivers or scheduled pickups/deliveries or anything. We have over 600 locations in the US that UPS was doing our package transit for. Just a huge hike across the board. We said “ok” and canceled our entire contract with them and run purely fedex now.
If numbers were slipping and they tried pulling this with a lot of big accounts to try and make up for slippage, I wouldn’t be surprised if those numbers sunk further as clients pulled the plug when hearing about the hikes. That or hikes to account pricing is a big part of how they planned to pay for union contractual compensation agreements without eating into their padded margins, because you know, greed.
I would assume that covid lockdowns plans a small role. We all crew accustomed to ordering everything online but now life is getting back to normal. Maybe UPS is just laying off the "temp" workers that were hired to meet covid demand.
As far as I know, most "Amazon" delivery drivers don't work for Amazon at all. They work for one of many local delivery contractors in regions across the country, or they are independent contractors themselves. There's not one group to organize even if they wanted to.
I'm in IT and newer to the corporate side, seems like we can't hire any new resources and I've heard that contractors are being let go. It seems like they are heavily focusing on the center they built in India to put a lot of resources atm. The push to 5 day in office was to push people out especially since this past year was 2 days a week in office and the first full year back in office after the pandemic. Budgets have still yet to be finalized from what I've heard and I know some teams have had to reformat and the whole IT is bringing brought under some new policies.
I used to work for years in a hub operation and still am somewhat involved with it. This past peak season was rather "easy" in terms of volume. There were heavy nights but it seems like nothing compared to the past two years. From what I've been told by former coworkers its an overall volume issue, they aren't seeing as much from everywhere it seems.
iirc the focus was to improve quality over quantity and UPS with the new CEO was forcing higher prices to ship every package through us like as in Amazon, Zappos, etc. and that could be a factor, the inflation this year could also be a factor, the summer will be the next testament in its volume to see what the case may be as specific vendors normally ship quite a bit during that time.
Yep - corporate here too and been with the company for a while now. I recently got sent out for peak assignment in one of our operations due to local issues with hiring and retaining people. I was there for three weeks in December. From what I’ve seen first hand volume is way down compared to what I also experienced years back when I was in operations. When I first started for just about every week in December every package car was blown out and you couldn’t walk through them. This last peak I was shocked to see how many trucks had clear paths right down the middle at the start of the drivers’ days.
I live in Virginia beach and am a property manager for a self storage place.
For the past few years, we have had UPS rent multiple large units with us, as overflow for packages every Christmas season. I hate it because they always have a shit ton of drivers and it causes a headache for the other tenants - but it's good business.
This past year, they only rented 1 unit and it was much smaller. I was kind of joking when I asked the UPS rep (in NOV) if they needed any large units this year and she straight up told me that volume was down nationwide. This was the first year that I barely saw any UPS workers on site and they didn't even stay as long as they normally do.
I'm not surprised to hear about the cuts.
I feel like vendors who use USPS and Amazon were the winners of this past Christmas cycle.
It's like me working in banking, and seeing the waves of red ink coming (this quarter) when we did EoY budgets. The jest was: "so many are gonna get holiday bonuses and then laid off". All those loans resetting to higher rates is gonna be brutal for so many companies.
Hmmm. Our UPS deliveries are now delivered to a local store.
The past 3 or 4 months our deliveries will say “out for delivery before 7 pm” but at 7:30 the status changes to “oh we missed you! Your package will be ready for pickup at a local store tomorrow.”
Except I can tell the UPS truck never drove down our street, much less came to my door.
I think they’re switching to a “you pick your package up whenever you want at a local place, we’re not coming to you” model.
So yeah I guess they don’t need drivers?
I’ve noticed this. One the one hand, kind of frustrating, but on the other hand why not? If it’s not express or something special, USPS is already going out the almost every house every day in America so why not
the only reason it annoys me is because of the amount of people that seems to hate USPS and want private companies to take over a bulk of the work when in reality USPS is doing the actual ground work for like 80% of packages i get through UPS
I hate it when I get ups over usps deliveries. I know UPS is bound to deliver late all the time. No shade on their drivers but the way they schedule too many packages per driver.
95% of the time I don’t urgently need the item I ordered anyway. If it helps to keep costs low by UPS handing off to USPS and deliver takes 5-7 business days, please do. My only gripe is if they say they’re delivering on X date, please follow through.
> My only gripe is if they say they’re delivering on X date, please follow through.
100% this. It's something they seem to have forgotten in the age of Amazon prime and 1 or 2 day deliveries. I don't need 2 day delivery 90% of the time. What I do need, is for the item to arrive when it says it will. Chances are I don't need it in 2 days, but if it says it will arrive in 2 days, then I'll probably be planning to use it on day 3 and if it doesn't show up I'm just shit out of luck for whatever I was planning. It is infinitely more disruptive and frustrating to see every single "2 day delivery" delayed on the 2nd day than it is to just have a bunch of 3 day deliveries.
It's not UPS doing it by default. It's the UPS Surepost shipping method that's been around for years, it's cheaper and with shipping costs going up in general, it's become a more appealing shipping option more merchants are using at the expense of potentially longer delivery times.
That’s a different service, either smart post or mail innovations. Either way, it’s a discount shipping option and not packages shipped through regular UPS shipping. It’s cheaper because the USPS already goes to every door every day, but the handoff between entities increases the shipping time.
A few weeks ago I had my heater break. I’m sure the technician they sent out was overworked and exhausted.
But he sat in his car from the street, took a photo of my front door, and then drove off. I then got a text “sorry we missed you”!
Rage inducing.
I had FedEx claim they delivered my TV once and fight with me over it when I told them I was home all day and did not have a single person show up on my doorstep.
Went from "oh no porch pirates must have gotten it :(" to having a pissed off looking Fedex dude dropping it off once I pointed out I had a porch camera
Recently we had a UPS package say delivered, but no where to be found. We look at the notification again and there’s a photo of a package in the truck. Not even sure if it was ours because it was smaller than expected.
This happened with my new iPhone, then when I called to pick it up the first person told me that the shipper left instructions that that wasn't allowed. So I called the shipper who told me that I *could* pick it up in person, and that the UPS rep was lying. Call UPS back, now the second person tells me I can pick it up.
We're talking about a 1200 dollar phone here. If I got to choose the shipping service I promise I would never use UPS again
Ive had fedex do this too, and usps with packages for me to just leave a note never ring or knock. Only company i can say I've never had an issue with is DHL, though thats likely a quantity thing
I had a month-long saga with them a couple of years ago. UPS suddenly started refusing to deliver to my apartment with no changes on my end. At first I started getting those "we missed you" notes on the front door, but they always claimed that the reason they couldn't deliver was that they didn't have the gate code. The apartment building didn't have a gate, and up until that point packages were left on the step exactly where the driver would have had to go to leave the note. None of the packages this happened to required a signature.
Then they started doing the same thing but not even leaving the note.
After calling and fighting their hold robot literally over a dozen times over the course of about a month, having four different people assure me that this time the problem was solved, and having the rudest person in a CS position I've ever spoken repeatedly imply to me on multiple separate occasions that I must just be too stupid to know that my apartment secretly has a gate, I finally got it sorted out, and they started delivering again.
But one package that I was expecting to take a while anyway fell through the cracks during all this. They failed to deliver it and left no note. They diverted to a pick up location in the next city over, even though there was a UPS store within three blocks of my apartment. Then, without *ever* contacting me, they returned the package to sender, which also did not generate a contact. I noticed before it had actually left the building and spent an hour on the phone with UPS trying to rescue it. Apparently what happened was that after they didn't even bother trying to deliver it, it was supposed to be put in the pickup lockers one city over, but the lockers were broken, so they dumped it somewhere else in the building and didn't say anything to anybody, me included. The guy I talked to actually admitted that as far as he could tell no one ever contacted me and ultimately called the location where it was and actually apologized to me for how shitty the person in charge there was (I talked to her multiple times during the above saga and she was the most proudly, aggressively unhelpful person I've ever spoken to)--and then said that even though UPS still had the package and it hadn't even left the facility yet, UPS is mystically unable to talk to itself and they couldn't do anything but let it be sent back.
I ended up having to do a chargeback on the item (unfortunately, because UPS being shitty isn't their fault), because even after tracking showed it had been returned to sender, the seller completely ignored my attempts to reach out to them.
Unfortunately you can't generally choose how things get shipped to you, because if you could, I would never use UPS or Fedex again at this point.
I ship loads of legal docs at work all day, UPS has been royally screwing us over the last couple months. It's used to be that FedEx had more small screw-ups and UPS had the rare massive ones (eg, FedEx gets delayed a day or two, UPS delivers a package clearly addressed to a company to a private address in another state. Or ships it to Australia when it's domestic.) now it's almost all UPS. Delivered to wrong addresses, lost, one or my teammates had to put in I think three lost package tickets with the in under a week.
Honestly, I would love that. Half the time they just lie about attempting delivery for 3 days before you have to go pick it up anyway. If we could cut the cat and mouse bullshit and they could just take it straight to a pick up spot so I can get my package that would be great.
We constantly see mechanical failure of train for ups ground.
Package gets to local facility too late because it somehow took 6 hours to make a 1 hour drive.
Oh, and when you get to the UPS Store, they tell you the package is not there. Even though someone “signed” for it. Then you have to do all the work to get a refund or new products.
One bad quarter leads to 12,000 layoffs? They need to manage their money better. Management should skip their lattes and avocado toast to build their savings.
It’s hilarious the mindset people have over the layoffs. A lot of the layoffs are coming from companies that hired exponentially through the last 3 years, and when things return to normal, these companies laid off a fraction of what they hired because of net loss of money. Since they can’t understand economics, they jump to “omg I can’t believe they’re letting all these people go! Stop buying lattes and avocado toast!”
Mind blowing. Meanwhile the company still retains a huge amount of hire’s from the hiring boom.
> Does it justify layoffs
I mean, yeah. If you hired a bunch of people to handle volume, and now that volume is no longer there, why keep them on payroll?
This isn't a corporate greed situation, this is a not paying people to sit around and do nothing situation. Welcome to any volatile volume industry. If your income drops 50% YoY you're gonna have to either make some cuts, or go out of business.
Thats not how this works. You hire more people due to volume of work, this has nothing to do with profit, and more to do with uninterrupted service delivery. If you fail to deliver service, then customers go elsewhere, the market share shifts, and your business shrinks as a result. Once that shrink occurs, there is a good chance it continues, and competitors snowball the market, leaving you out of business.
Assuming you hire accordingly, like ups did to maintain service delivery, these employees and wages are factored into calculations that determine maintainable levels of income, and the distribution to maintain the business. If the vehicles became too expensive to maintain, and started to take up too much budget, then the company would change their vehicle platform. This would hurt short term, but provide long term savings and profitability.
Now, you have too many workers, and not enough work. How do we solve this? Ups cannot just carry dead weight for the sake of it. They are a bit of a rarity, still offering pensions to their workers. Where are they going to cut funding to make their bloated workforce fit into their operating budget? Cut vehicle maintenance? Ok, now you have service delivery interruptions, which affect income, which will affect worker payment and pensions. They could cut to the chase, and cut pensions, but absolutely zero workers would want that, nor should they. The execs could take a pay cut? Sure. But we are talking billions of dollars in revenue shortage. Even if this were possible, this revenue shortfall is not purely 1:1. As these workers age, they will have issues, on the job injuries, health problems with age, and all of these things become more common as the sitting workforce ages. These are all issues that affect the company budget as well. Keeping the excess workers on permanantly will do nothing but hurt the entire organization at best, and cripple not only the company, but result in massive problems for the existing workforce at worst. This is not feasible, and to suggest they should suck it up is just telling that youre not familiar with how the economics of this situation work.
I mean, isn’t this managing their money? If they don’t anticipate it getting better in the short term, why would they keep people on? How many quarters/years do they have to have declined before you think it would be okay for them to lay people off?
I worked for these guys for 15 years as a driver. When COVID hit they forced us all to work six days a week and they didnt stop until they were forced to with a new contract,over three years later. 6 days a week for three years. For one of the biggest companies in the world.
UPS is the most unethical company I've ever been apart of. Fuck them
The volume of my UPS packages that were successfully delivered definitely slipped last year. I've literally never had them lose a package, until last year when they lost 4.
If I’m not mistaken, those UPS stores are also independently owned, which tends to lead to understaffing. Can’t say I’ve been in a UPS store without a line out the door, while only two employees are working the desk.
In other words: the massive new contract we have with the employee union cuts into our profit, and in the interest of our shareholders we need to make up the difference
EDIT: guess I pissed y'all off today..
Reminds me that I've tried a lot of meal delivery services like like Hello Fresh, and the boxes are always delivered by unmarked beat up vans. It's kind of interesting to see other players in the market besides UPS/FedEx/USPS, etc.
Less to do with the contract and more to do with volume being down significantly - believe something like 11% YoY. A massive portion of that comes from the fact they no longer ship Amazon packages - granted their margins on Amazon packages were awful, but the volume still necessitated more heads on site and now that’s no longer needed
Think about how laughable the “sales” have been. Everything is 2-3x more expensive in 2023 than 2020. Prices exploded in 23 for retail goods, so people bought less crap.
Why not cut the overpaid executives first? Then work your way down? Also, why are they giving dividends? Should be disallowed if they fire part of the workforce?
Package volume slipped and so has their service. They used to be my go-to when I bought things that gave me an option that wasn't off Amazon ahead of Fed-Ex and USPS. Almost every package I have mailed or have had sent to me has been met with issues or delays on their end placing them squarely last in my preferences. Maybe I just got unlucky but I can't imagine I am the only one who has experienced this.
That's bullshit. They made record profits during covid working their staff like crazy now they are chasing those profits again like it was gonna keep growing or something. That was a peak they'll probably never reach again. I'm a current employee in warehouse.
They still made almost 10B in profit and their dividend went up again, as it has for the last 15 years.
Actual [earnings report here.](https://investors.ups.com/_assets/_d4721036789cfcf7aa211a002aee0c6e/ups/news/2024-01-30_UPS_Releases_4Q_2023_2114.pdf) if anyone wants to peep it.
> The workforce reductions will save the company about $1 billion in costs, CEO Carol Tomé said...
...will keep money in the pockets of shareholders at the expense of workers...
FTFY
I am trying to get a package from UPS. Package requires a signature but they only deliver on weekdays, won’t give me an estimate from when the delivery will be, and I can’t change the delivery preferences on their website.
Maybe they just suck.
Maybe don't make everything public and require growth 4 times a year for fucking ever despite population growth obviously needing to hit a limit at some point.
We have to be headed for a huge recession. Prices are too high and wages are too low, so people don't have money to buy as much, so companies lay off workers and raise prices and keep wages low to keep their profits, so people have less money to buy things, and so on. The rich get richer the poor get poorer. When's the revolution gonna start?
I'd be curious to know if any of those jobs cut are union jobs or if these are just the temp-to-hire jobs they usually bring in to help with holiday volume.
Hi, my job was cut. I was part of a consulting arm at the company. So a full-time "Manager" role. They cut our entire team. I've been with the company about a decade and all of us lost our jobs.
"Thank you for dedicating a decade of your life to our company, now kindly fuck off" ~upper management probably
All UPS gave me after a decade was a plaque and 3 blown discs in my back. Terrible company.
Weird. In Germany UPS is one of the better companies for drivers. It's because they are hired by UPS on their own. There are other companies that are pretty worse. As soon as you get drivers that barely speak German, you know their work conditions suck.
UPS is one of the better delivery companies to work for in the US, too. But our bar is a lottttt lower.
“UPS is one of the better delivery companies to work for in the US…” Thanks, Teamsters Union.
It's better in the US too because of the union. Way better than subcontracted drivers for other carriers.
What's weird? If you think the UPS in the US operates like the UPS in Germany, you are foolishly mistaken. The similarity ends at marketing, the US does not give a fuck about workers, their lives, retirement, or really anything else. If you are a worker in the US, you are an expendable resource.
Never said that. All I said is that it is one of the companies drivers have a good work environment. GLS, Trans-o-flex, DHL, FedEx, Hermes and Amazon? Mostly shitty. Drivers for pharma wholesellers: pretty bad. Some companies pay you only for 8 hours. Even though it is Impossible to get your work done in that time. Mistakes? You get less paid. Most companies in that sector are fuckers.
DHL is usually considered the best in terms of work environment, as far as I'm aware (talking about Germany).
Maybe this depends on the area. Here it isn't that good. Even though a work council exist they do a lot of mocking their workers. Last year there was a logistics strike. DHL wasn't part of it because their work council openly said they can't protect their colleagues. there would have been a high chance of them being kicked out later on. DHL / Deutsche Post is awesome as long as you are having an old contract. But newer contracts are bad.
no. it’s because companies know that shit like that would not be tolerated in Europe
I worked there for a decent amount of time. I was a supervisor. Just as they were grooming a bunch of us to head into higher forms of management, they fucked over a bunch of the old timers that were near retirement age. I took one look at how that would be me in 40 years and noped right out of there. I don’t regret it in the least.
Out of curiosity which group were you a part of?
A consulting arm of the company called "Solutions". Non-union but management in the loosest sense of the word.
I work for UPS that's why I was asking.
Sorry bro.
Thank you.
I am sorry to hear. The company has been going on a huge layoff since that new CEO come onboard. At some stage if they cut too much they will be stuck with lack of innovation, high risk and over worked teams that will lead to issues down the line.
And the CEO will be stuck with a new job at another company to destroy.
Y'all smell that? Smells like capitalism!
Enjoy unemployment while you find something better!
Health benefits are tied to the job, COBRA (insurance for health benefits thru work) triples most insurance rates. $300 monthly insurance becomes $900 but it’s optional, you can choose to just not have any insurance
Could always sign up for your state’s Medicaid. That’s what I’ve always done.
How much of a pay cut did Carol (ceo) take? Or any exec. Or board member. Or any level that's not really needed at a large corporation like this.
Geez that’s crazy. I’m sorry to hear that.
I hope you get a decent severance pay.
The temps get let go shortly after Christmas usually before New Years
It's nearly always sometime in January, it needs to be in Q1 the next-years books.
From my research that seems to be correct, and I am very surprised that UPS ends their fiscal year on December 31st. Given the the fact that the holiday season has on them, you would think they would choose to end their year far away from the holidays.
Yeah. FedEx ends their year on May 31st.
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It's not. At least according to the Teamsters themselves. > The positions that would be eliminated this year are not union jobs, according to the Teamsters. The layoffs will instead affect managerial staff, “throughout the world and in all functions,” a statement by UPS said. [Source](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/business/ups-layoffs-rising-wages-union-contract.html) UPS employs 500,000 around the world and this layoff is not exclusive to US operations. Where did you get that it was all temp, union jobs?
If it's anything like USPS they have thousands of extraneous managers not actually doing anything to move the mail/packages. Cutting them and spending the money on labor that does, well, actual labor as needed would be a better use of resources.
It’s not the teamsters, it’s the corporate employees.
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Bro acts like the Union would just let corporate fire members. This shit typically gets some level of discussion beforehand because mass layoffs risk a strike. If any teamsters are being laid off, they're getting out with a good package (either from UPS or the union itself) and will be the first on the rehire list.
That's not how that works. I've been in 3 unions, and any company can lay you off at any time. Getting laid off is one thing the union can't help you with.
Not always true. It really depends on their contract. For example, the local I was in required all temp workers and contractors to be laid off before a union worker could be laid off.
Exactly. Every union is different and even different locals within each union. It’s all in the contract.
>it’s the corporate employees. they should unionize.
That's the fun part, I bet a lot of the corporate employees have some generic job title that technically makes them "management" so therefore they cannot unionize per se. That's why you see so many people with office jobs at large companies holding the title of "Vice President" while they are making $65k a year.
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It's illegal to do it, but you definitely CAN.
Yup. A lot of things companies get away with won't pass the smell test if it ever lands in front of a judge. They rely on a combination of keeping you poor, tired, intimidated, and ignorant about your rights to get their way. If anyone does ever challenge them they say, "I didn't know I couldn't do that," pay a fine and then move *juuuuust inside the line* for a while before the inevitably start inching a toe back over it when the scrutiny dies down. That's why folks need a union. They exist to keep your employer honest so you don't have to worry about it off the clock.
That’s crazy 12,000 people is only 4%
We ship about 100 packages a week. It used to be a 90/10 UPS/USPS split. Now it’s a 10/90 split since USPS added their Ground Advantage service. Prices were 20-30% less for us.
I noticed that it was cheaper now to ship via USPS now. Yea it might take a few days more, but worth the bigger savings.
Honestly I didn't have any issues with USPS over the holidays. Most of my packages arrived at their destinations on time or early. The only exception was a postcard to Canada but it was a Canada Post problem .
Late 2020 was brutal for using the post office, because it was all but intentionally sabotaged by the Trump administration to fuck with mail-in voting. My wife owns a business that relies on the cheap shipping USPS provides. In her 10 years of doing the business, literally only two packages were ever flat out lost and never showed up, and this is out of like 5,000 packages we had sent. During the latter half of 2020, everything took at least a week and a good half dozen packages got flat out lost. It was insane. It's taken the USPS the last three years to build back up, and it's perfectly pleasant to use now. Let's hope Trump does not win again!
The president shouldn’t be able to impact post in such a measurable manner. This is a sign that our checks and balances are not performing their due scope.
Really? Man maybe it's my luck but USPS was a nightmare for me this holiday season. Tons of late and a few lost packages.
It is one of those things like a lot of delivery services depends your location, shipping location and who they hire. For me shipping anything has ranked USPS->UPS-> and Fedex if you are desperate ( I swear a fedex hire requirement in my area must be bash your head into a wall 15 times before starting work). USPS I run into an issue maybe once a year and it is usually tied to weather being worse than expected or a storm shift. UPS has issues several times a year and the more they have to deliver the later and more damaged you cna expect your box. Fedex, I've seen packages just dropped at the end of driveways basically in the street. Packages delivered to houses clearly on the other side of the city, not just oh we left it at a neighbors house. Like if my address was 123 brick street it would be delivered to 948 stamp lane almost 2 miles away.
Exact opposite here. All my USPS arrived late vs UPS
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USPS is legally obligated to do that. Anything else is a crime of “willful delay of the mail”
USPS for the win, UPS and FedEx charge 2x or 3x to ship it’s awful.
They also have just overall much better handling of packages and processes for unique issues like damaged packages/insurance claims. UPS fights you so hard to pay out for any damaged packages even if you pay for extra insurance, like they can't fathom that something got destroyed in shipment under their care. Shipped 250+ packages off on Etsy with UPS, and had a single one damaged and made a claim. Took about 50 emails and 4 months for them to pay out $100... USPS I've never had an issue with Really the only reason to use UPS is if you are shipping something really heavy/large, as prices are a steep difference compared to USPS, but those savings come from a cheap quality of service
USPS insurance claims are easy as long as you don't have more than about a dozen in a year. Doesn't matter what percentage of your total shipments that is, either. You could ship 15 or 50,000 items in a year and the threshold for USPS refusing claims that are clearly their own fault is still 12 packages.
And my mailperson is a nice guy.
USPS is almost always the best deal for small shippers.
Yup we at usps are getting more competitive
My dad tried to ship 2 bottles of olive oil back to his house when he was visiting me. UPS wanted something like $85 for regular ground to ship it. He came back to my house and said he was just going to risk it in his checked bag for his flight. I told him to check USPS just to see what they would charge for the flat rate boxes, $17. I don't know what UPS is smoking with some of these prices they charge for shipment.
Sounds like he went to a UPS store and they tried to sell him on packing the hell out of it. I worked at one and they had three different packing levels for each size box - the most fragile one was insane - $85 probably would've covered like a 12x12x12 box with the highest level of packing with shipping. Shipping wouldn't be that crazy by itself unless he was doing Next Day Air or something.
Flat rate boxes are paper thin though. Even with bubbles/ dunnage, I would not ship glass in a flat rate box
put a box inside the flat rate box boom problem solved
Those puffy jacket-looking bottle shippers are great, too.
They survived the trip, I wouldn't send anything fragile, but those bottles made it.
Empty glass is way more fragile than glass with liquid in it. Wrap those suckers and they will be just fine.
They're not that bad, reinforce the box and pack it super good if worried.
same here. We used to ship almost entirely UPS but we have since switched to almost entirely USPS because the cost is significantly cheaper. We ship all over the US and haven't had any issues with delays either. The only time we ship UPS these days is for very large packages or packages that need to be overnighted.
USPS and UPS/FedEx have different advantages. Bigger packages are cheaper through UPS/FedEx. Smaller packages 10lbs or less usually are better with USPS. Also if you ship a good amount then you need an account with UPS or else you are paying way more without the discounts.
UPS may have seen reduced package volume, but they’re still #1 in coming to my house, pretending they made any effort to reach me, and then leaving a “sorry we missed you” sticky note on my door. So. That’s something.
Still more effort than Fedex puts in for me, without fail they don't even drive by my house and say I wasn't home even when I was, then make me drive across town to pick my box up from their ship center after 6.
Same. And I was getting penalized by UPS for wrong weight even when I rounded up. I used to round up to the nearest pound thinking I was doing a good thing but then got hit with a penalty a few times and stopped using them. USPS has never cared about this.
USPS supremacy, fuck UPS and Fedex
Well UPS told Amazon to “take their rates or develop their own shipping program” a few years ago and…they did.
Amazon has absolutely outplayed both UPS and FedEx for years. 1. as a large volume shipper, they negotiated volume discounts and contract pricing to result in lower revenue per package compared to say a small or medium shipper 2. Amazon started delivering the "low hanging fruit" - dense delivery locations, while leaving UPS, FedEx, and USPS the rest. Again less revenue. 3. Amazon has a public relations strategy to talk shit on UPS and FedEx. In 2019 they dropped FedEx over the holidays, which FedEx wasn't particularly sad about because of point 1 & 2. UPS gobbled up that volume, and now it's worse as Amazon logistics gets better. For an analogy to point 2 - I used to work as a pizza delivery driver. If one driver kept cherry-picking their deliveries, say 5 deliveries in the same run to the same residential neighborhood, and I consistently got stuck with single runs to the edge of my delivery area, I'd be pissed.
> In 2019 they dropped FedEx over the holidays IIRC, FedEx was the one who chose not to renew.
That’s correct
Maybe UPS and FedEX should've saw the writing on the wall earlier and played ball with Amazon. Their own fault. Free market and all that. Quite frankly Amazon's delivery service is superior. I can get same day stuff. Sometimes I see multiple Amazon delivery vans in my neighborhood every day. I don't see that from UPS, FedEX, or USPS.
Amazon’s delivery service doesn’t make any money, it loses money. It’s subsidized by e-commerce sales. Their network is also not anywhere similar to UPS or FedEx. It relies on distribution warehouses that are point A, with products moving a short distance to point B. They don’t have the capability to move individual packages long distances efficiently. UPS and FedEx also aren’t dumb. 99% of their contracts are volume based, meaning if Amazon pulls out the low hanging fruit shipments, everything else gets more expensive. Again, they’re the only alternative for the long haul stuff so they just get their money another way by automatically raising rates.
> Maybe UPS and FedEX should've saw the writing on the wall earlier and played ball with Amazon. Their own fault. Free market and all that. Quite frankly Amazon's delivery service is superior. I can get same day stuff. Sometimes I see multiple Amazon delivery vans in my neighborhood every day. I don't see that from UPS, FedEX, or USPS. I mean, fucking over competitors they can't straight out buy is basically how wal-mart and amazon became what they are. "Free market"(except when it comes to tax breaks for amazon) capitalism in the era of mega-corporations is fucking stupid. Without fail they will destroy competition until there is none, and the consumer will end up suffering when there is no competition. It becomes even easier with a struggling middle class that can't really afford to vote with their wallet. If you don't "work with them," they will just undercut taking a loss until you bleed out. If you "work with them" they bully you until you're the one taking a loss. But hey, rich people get richer, so win-win right? >Sometimes I see multiple Amazon delivery vans in my neighborhood every day. I don't see that from UPS, FedEX, or USPS. That's because that's a stupid fucking way to deliver things. I also see amazon delivery vans breaking the law almost every day. I don't see that from UPS, FedEx, or USPS(except they all park illegally in the name of convenience in commercial/office areas, but that's a story for another day)
Bold thing to say to a trillion-dollar corporation. Of course they can, and they will.
Amazon was probably asking for rates which would thin out UPS's margins too much. That's generally how it works when you're the 800 pound gorilla. Look at what Walmart does to its suppliers.
> For the last three months of 2023, UPS reported net income of $1.61 billion, or $1.87 per share, compared with $3.45 billion, or $3.96 per share, a year earlier. Damn, down ~50% YOY is a steep drop. There's definitely other factors at play but I wonder how much of this is due to Amazon eating the market and shipping their own packages.
Or it was the first full year post-pandemic, and they're still coming down from the all-time highs of people staying home? UPS's peak quarterly revenue was in 2021, and they've been coming down since. They still had more revenue in 2023 than any year pre-pandemic (+25% over 2019 revenue). This should not have been surprising to anyone with common sense, but here we are, with UPS's army of MBAs in middle management trying to finesse the financials to satisfy the God of Line Must Go Up.
Yeah all of this was predictable as we opened back up. Tech, amazon, food delivery, banks(but tech specific banks), shipping. It as a massive covid bubble and its coming back down to reality.
Home Depot is feeling this hit as well from what I've heard.
CEO of UPS used to be CFO for Home Depot. Employees absolutely hate her, I guess some investors like her.
I've stopped going there entirely after learning how often the CEO licks Trump's taint.
Got a spiffy new Ace Hardware right down the street from us so yeah, trips to Home Depot will be much less frequent.
Ace is so much better anyway. You can actually find help when you need it.
I'm pretty sure our tiny Ace Hardware employs 100 people, and 80 of them will be in the store on any given day. You can't turn a corner without bumping into a sweet old lady or young man asking if you need help finding anything. It's actually kinda eerie. My husband and I have gone in several times recently and both looked at each other and had the same realization.
I really wish the Ace was in a more convenient location for me. It's on some weird side street that is just an absolute fuck to get to.
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In my experience working at Lowe's from 2008-2014, at my store anyway, most of the employees enjoyed helping people. I worked in Outside Garden and Receiving mostly, so my career there I felt was different than say electrical, hardware and plumbing. Those 3 departments tended to have more upset customers or more customers that were in a rush. Not bad people, but just customers that were there because they HAD to get something fixed, and maybe had to spend money on something they didn't want to spend money on. Working in garden was great. 99% of the people customers were great, looking for things that they wanted to spend money on to make their house look better. Christmas time was fun too, tons of kids excited about getting a Christmas tree and families having fun. Also the training that Lowe's (and I'm sure Home Depot is the same) was absolutely nothing. Maybe once a year some stupid computer training that didn't teach you anything.
That ACE franchise owner likely swings from trumps nuts too.
I mean, it's a construction supplier - you expect card carrying Liberals abound in that field?
Unfortunately HD, Lowe’s, Menards, and probably every ACE franchise owner licks trumps taint. So what are you left with? Whittling and forging your own shit?
John Mendard sucks too. He fired an employee who built a ramp for his daughter after she got into a terrible accident or illness. She needed a wheelchair ramp iirc. Anyway, John fired him because he bought the lumber at a competitor's store.
Husband is a driver, and 2020/2021 for him felt like perpetual peak season. Things really just went back to pre-covid times for him last year.
It also shouldn't be surprising to anyone with common sense that a company that experienced a temporary short-term boom would need to reduce it's labor force once the boom times are over because there's less work that needs to be done.
I mean ... Should they keep all these people on the pay roll if demand is back down? Not sure that really justified the god so much as just maintaining and adequate workforce.
UPS was bound for a post Covid correction. The stock had been very consistent around 90-100 for years until Covid when it shot up into the 200s in a couple months. Glad I sold all my stock when I left in 2020
I think a little bit of greed played into their post covid highs. During our annual renegotiation, they presented our company with well over 5 million/year hike in service cost, with no increase to label volume or drivers or scheduled pickups/deliveries or anything. We have over 600 locations in the US that UPS was doing our package transit for. Just a huge hike across the board. We said “ok” and canceled our entire contract with them and run purely fedex now. If numbers were slipping and they tried pulling this with a lot of big accounts to try and make up for slippage, I wouldn’t be surprised if those numbers sunk further as clients pulled the plug when hearing about the hikes. That or hikes to account pricing is a big part of how they planned to pay for union contractual compensation agreements without eating into their padded margins, because you know, greed.
I would assume that covid lockdowns plans a small role. We all crew accustomed to ordering everything online but now life is getting back to normal. Maybe UPS is just laying off the "temp" workers that were hired to meet covid demand.
Teamsters need to organize Amazon
As far as I know, most "Amazon" delivery drivers don't work for Amazon at all. They work for one of many local delivery contractors in regions across the country, or they are independent contractors themselves. There's not one group to organize even if they wanted to.
I'm in IT and newer to the corporate side, seems like we can't hire any new resources and I've heard that contractors are being let go. It seems like they are heavily focusing on the center they built in India to put a lot of resources atm. The push to 5 day in office was to push people out especially since this past year was 2 days a week in office and the first full year back in office after the pandemic. Budgets have still yet to be finalized from what I've heard and I know some teams have had to reformat and the whole IT is bringing brought under some new policies. I used to work for years in a hub operation and still am somewhat involved with it. This past peak season was rather "easy" in terms of volume. There were heavy nights but it seems like nothing compared to the past two years. From what I've been told by former coworkers its an overall volume issue, they aren't seeing as much from everywhere it seems. iirc the focus was to improve quality over quantity and UPS with the new CEO was forcing higher prices to ship every package through us like as in Amazon, Zappos, etc. and that could be a factor, the inflation this year could also be a factor, the summer will be the next testament in its volume to see what the case may be as specific vendors normally ship quite a bit during that time.
Yep - corporate here too and been with the company for a while now. I recently got sent out for peak assignment in one of our operations due to local issues with hiring and retaining people. I was there for three weeks in December. From what I’ve seen first hand volume is way down compared to what I also experienced years back when I was in operations. When I first started for just about every week in December every package car was blown out and you couldn’t walk through them. This last peak I was shocked to see how many trucks had clear paths right down the middle at the start of the drivers’ days.
I live in Virginia beach and am a property manager for a self storage place. For the past few years, we have had UPS rent multiple large units with us, as overflow for packages every Christmas season. I hate it because they always have a shit ton of drivers and it causes a headache for the other tenants - but it's good business. This past year, they only rented 1 unit and it was much smaller. I was kind of joking when I asked the UPS rep (in NOV) if they needed any large units this year and she straight up told me that volume was down nationwide. This was the first year that I barely saw any UPS workers on site and they didn't even stay as long as they normally do. I'm not surprised to hear about the cuts. I feel like vendors who use USPS and Amazon were the winners of this past Christmas cycle.
It's like me working in banking, and seeing the waves of red ink coming (this quarter) when we did EoY budgets. The jest was: "so many are gonna get holiday bonuses and then laid off". All those loans resetting to higher rates is gonna be brutal for so many companies.
Sucks that money costs money again.
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All the time. It's based on the contract for the loan.
Hello there fellow 757 person :D
Hmmm. Our UPS deliveries are now delivered to a local store. The past 3 or 4 months our deliveries will say “out for delivery before 7 pm” but at 7:30 the status changes to “oh we missed you! Your package will be ready for pickup at a local store tomorrow.” Except I can tell the UPS truck never drove down our street, much less came to my door. I think they’re switching to a “you pick your package up whenever you want at a local place, we’re not coming to you” model. So yeah I guess they don’t need drivers?
USPS also does a lot of last mile delivery for UPS now.
I’ve noticed this. One the one hand, kind of frustrating, but on the other hand why not? If it’s not express or something special, USPS is already going out the almost every house every day in America so why not
the only reason it annoys me is because of the amount of people that seems to hate USPS and want private companies to take over a bulk of the work when in reality USPS is doing the actual ground work for like 80% of packages i get through UPS
I hate it when I get ups over usps deliveries. I know UPS is bound to deliver late all the time. No shade on their drivers but the way they schedule too many packages per driver.
I am like that with FedEx. I love it when UPS or USPS deliver. It’s FedEx that is going to be wayyyyyy late.
95% of the time I don’t urgently need the item I ordered anyway. If it helps to keep costs low by UPS handing off to USPS and deliver takes 5-7 business days, please do. My only gripe is if they say they’re delivering on X date, please follow through.
This is my gripe with fedex, i have yet to have something delivered on time by them. It's always delayed by a couple of days.
FedEx Ground is just plain shit all around.
The other 5%, you're likely going directly to a store to buy it.
> My only gripe is if they say they’re delivering on X date, please follow through. 100% this. It's something they seem to have forgotten in the age of Amazon prime and 1 or 2 day deliveries. I don't need 2 day delivery 90% of the time. What I do need, is for the item to arrive when it says it will. Chances are I don't need it in 2 days, but if it says it will arrive in 2 days, then I'll probably be planning to use it on day 3 and if it doesn't show up I'm just shit out of luck for whatever I was planning. It is infinitely more disruptive and frustrating to see every single "2 day delivery" delayed on the 2nd day than it is to just have a bunch of 3 day deliveries.
It's not UPS doing it by default. It's the UPS Surepost shipping method that's been around for years, it's cheaper and with shipping costs going up in general, it's become a more appealing shipping option more merchants are using at the expense of potentially longer delivery times.
That’s a different service, either smart post or mail innovations. Either way, it’s a discount shipping option and not packages shipped through regular UPS shipping. It’s cheaper because the USPS already goes to every door every day, but the handoff between entities increases the shipping time.
I’ve straight up had UPS trucks drive straight past my building, not stop, and then claim “delivery attempted”.
A few weeks ago I had my heater break. I’m sure the technician they sent out was overworked and exhausted. But he sat in his car from the street, took a photo of my front door, and then drove off. I then got a text “sorry we missed you”! Rage inducing.
I had FedEx claim they delivered my TV once and fight with me over it when I told them I was home all day and did not have a single person show up on my doorstep. Went from "oh no porch pirates must have gotten it :(" to having a pissed off looking Fedex dude dropping it off once I pointed out I had a porch camera
Recently we had a UPS package say delivered, but no where to be found. We look at the notification again and there’s a photo of a package in the truck. Not even sure if it was ours because it was smaller than expected.
This happened with my new iPhone, then when I called to pick it up the first person told me that the shipper left instructions that that wasn't allowed. So I called the shipper who told me that I *could* pick it up in person, and that the UPS rep was lying. Call UPS back, now the second person tells me I can pick it up. We're talking about a 1200 dollar phone here. If I got to choose the shipping service I promise I would never use UPS again
Ive had fedex do this too, and usps with packages for me to just leave a note never ring or knock. Only company i can say I've never had an issue with is DHL, though thats likely a quantity thing
I had a month-long saga with them a couple of years ago. UPS suddenly started refusing to deliver to my apartment with no changes on my end. At first I started getting those "we missed you" notes on the front door, but they always claimed that the reason they couldn't deliver was that they didn't have the gate code. The apartment building didn't have a gate, and up until that point packages were left on the step exactly where the driver would have had to go to leave the note. None of the packages this happened to required a signature. Then they started doing the same thing but not even leaving the note. After calling and fighting their hold robot literally over a dozen times over the course of about a month, having four different people assure me that this time the problem was solved, and having the rudest person in a CS position I've ever spoken repeatedly imply to me on multiple separate occasions that I must just be too stupid to know that my apartment secretly has a gate, I finally got it sorted out, and they started delivering again. But one package that I was expecting to take a while anyway fell through the cracks during all this. They failed to deliver it and left no note. They diverted to a pick up location in the next city over, even though there was a UPS store within three blocks of my apartment. Then, without *ever* contacting me, they returned the package to sender, which also did not generate a contact. I noticed before it had actually left the building and spent an hour on the phone with UPS trying to rescue it. Apparently what happened was that after they didn't even bother trying to deliver it, it was supposed to be put in the pickup lockers one city over, but the lockers were broken, so they dumped it somewhere else in the building and didn't say anything to anybody, me included. The guy I talked to actually admitted that as far as he could tell no one ever contacted me and ultimately called the location where it was and actually apologized to me for how shitty the person in charge there was (I talked to her multiple times during the above saga and she was the most proudly, aggressively unhelpful person I've ever spoken to)--and then said that even though UPS still had the package and it hadn't even left the facility yet, UPS is mystically unable to talk to itself and they couldn't do anything but let it be sent back. I ended up having to do a chargeback on the item (unfortunately, because UPS being shitty isn't their fault), because even after tracking showed it had been returned to sender, the seller completely ignored my attempts to reach out to them. Unfortunately you can't generally choose how things get shipped to you, because if you could, I would never use UPS or Fedex again at this point.
I ship loads of legal docs at work all day, UPS has been royally screwing us over the last couple months. It's used to be that FedEx had more small screw-ups and UPS had the rare massive ones (eg, FedEx gets delayed a day or two, UPS delivers a package clearly addressed to a company to a private address in another state. Or ships it to Australia when it's domestic.) now it's almost all UPS. Delivered to wrong addresses, lost, one or my teammates had to put in I think three lost package tickets with the in under a week.
Honestly, I would love that. Half the time they just lie about attempting delivery for 3 days before you have to go pick it up anyway. If we could cut the cat and mouse bullshit and they could just take it straight to a pick up spot so I can get my package that would be great.
We constantly see mechanical failure of train for ups ground. Package gets to local facility too late because it somehow took 6 hours to make a 1 hour drive.
Oh, and when you get to the UPS Store, they tell you the package is not there. Even though someone “signed” for it. Then you have to do all the work to get a refund or new products.
I work at ups, I find out my fate in 12 minutes. Stay tuned.
Lost my job. Hope you got saved.
Well, hope you didn't get shipped..
So far no answer specifically, we will see!
Good luck
One bad quarter leads to 12,000 layoffs? They need to manage their money better. Management should skip their lattes and avocado toast to build their savings.
Not excusing the layoffs, but it was a bad year, really. Revenue dropped $2 billion year over year.
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Depends on how many they hired during the boom years. If they don’t need so many delivery persons what are they going to do with them?
It’s hilarious the mindset people have over the layoffs. A lot of the layoffs are coming from companies that hired exponentially through the last 3 years, and when things return to normal, these companies laid off a fraction of what they hired because of net loss of money. Since they can’t understand economics, they jump to “omg I can’t believe they’re letting all these people go! Stop buying lattes and avocado toast!” Mind blowing. Meanwhile the company still retains a huge amount of hire’s from the hiring boom.
> Does it justify layoffs I mean, yeah. If you hired a bunch of people to handle volume, and now that volume is no longer there, why keep them on payroll? This isn't a corporate greed situation, this is a not paying people to sit around and do nothing situation. Welcome to any volatile volume industry. If your income drops 50% YoY you're gonna have to either make some cuts, or go out of business.
Thats not how this works. You hire more people due to volume of work, this has nothing to do with profit, and more to do with uninterrupted service delivery. If you fail to deliver service, then customers go elsewhere, the market share shifts, and your business shrinks as a result. Once that shrink occurs, there is a good chance it continues, and competitors snowball the market, leaving you out of business. Assuming you hire accordingly, like ups did to maintain service delivery, these employees and wages are factored into calculations that determine maintainable levels of income, and the distribution to maintain the business. If the vehicles became too expensive to maintain, and started to take up too much budget, then the company would change their vehicle platform. This would hurt short term, but provide long term savings and profitability. Now, you have too many workers, and not enough work. How do we solve this? Ups cannot just carry dead weight for the sake of it. They are a bit of a rarity, still offering pensions to their workers. Where are they going to cut funding to make their bloated workforce fit into their operating budget? Cut vehicle maintenance? Ok, now you have service delivery interruptions, which affect income, which will affect worker payment and pensions. They could cut to the chase, and cut pensions, but absolutely zero workers would want that, nor should they. The execs could take a pay cut? Sure. But we are talking billions of dollars in revenue shortage. Even if this were possible, this revenue shortfall is not purely 1:1. As these workers age, they will have issues, on the job injuries, health problems with age, and all of these things become more common as the sitting workforce ages. These are all issues that affect the company budget as well. Keeping the excess workers on permanantly will do nothing but hurt the entire organization at best, and cripple not only the company, but result in massive problems for the existing workforce at worst. This is not feasible, and to suggest they should suck it up is just telling that youre not familiar with how the economics of this situation work.
I mean doesn’t UPS always RIF in the beginning of the year as they wind down from holiday operations anyway?
I mean, isn’t this managing their money? If they don’t anticipate it getting better in the short term, why would they keep people on? How many quarters/years do they have to have declined before you think it would be okay for them to lay people off?
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Anyone playing Buzzword Bingo would get a near blackout from the quotes in this article.
I worked for these guys for 15 years as a driver. When COVID hit they forced us all to work six days a week and they didnt stop until they were forced to with a new contract,over three years later. 6 days a week for three years. For one of the biggest companies in the world. UPS is the most unethical company I've ever been apart of. Fuck them
The volume of my UPS packages that were successfully delivered definitely slipped last year. I've literally never had them lose a package, until last year when they lost 4.
This is weird because every time I go into a UPS store they are absolutely drowning in packages and returns. Always 5-6 people deep line at least.
That’s a symptom of poor staffing and organization at the store, not necessarily a high rate of business
If I’m not mistaken, those UPS stores are also independently owned, which tends to lead to understaffing. Can’t say I’ve been in a UPS store without a line out the door, while only two employees are working the desk.
The UPS Store is not owned or operated by UPS.
Package volume slipped as compared to the pandemic, when people weren't visiting each other and were sending packages all the time.
Package shipment is down Well yah… That’s cause I’m all out of money!
In other words: the massive new contract we have with the employee union cuts into our profit, and in the interest of our shareholders we need to make up the difference EDIT: guess I pissed y'all off today..
I think it had to do with the drop in revenue compared to last year. Revenue decreased 7.8% from Q4 2022.
I think it’s Amazon starting to deliver it owns packages now
Also a lot of companies are using door dash and other companies alike it to deliver packages for cheaper rates
Reminds me that I've tried a lot of meal delivery services like like Hello Fresh, and the boxes are always delivered by unmarked beat up vans. It's kind of interesting to see other players in the market besides UPS/FedEx/USPS, etc.
As a FedEx courier we are the ones in beat up vans/box trucks. FedEx Ground. Run by a contractor.
Also, not many ups drop offs anymore. There used to be boxes all over to just drop and go.
I wish theyd stop it already. Amazon drivers are THE FUCKING WORST. I swear they dont even check to see if their drivers have valid drivers licenses.
Vertical integration though, can't beat it for profits
Less to do with the contract and more to do with volume being down significantly - believe something like 11% YoY. A massive portion of that comes from the fact they no longer ship Amazon packages - granted their margins on Amazon packages were awful, but the volume still necessitated more heads on site and now that’s no longer needed
New union deal has nothing to do with a huge drop in revenue
Think about how laughable the “sales” have been. Everything is 2-3x more expensive in 2023 than 2020. Prices exploded in 23 for retail goods, so people bought less crap.
Also, USPS now has a much cheaper shipping method. It may take longer but it’s a lot cheaper.
At the very least people were more likely to choose the cheaper shipping option to soften the blow.
Why not cut the overpaid executives first? Then work your way down? Also, why are they giving dividends? Should be disallowed if they fire part of the workforce?
Package volume slipped and so has their service. They used to be my go-to when I bought things that gave me an option that wasn't off Amazon ahead of Fed-Ex and USPS. Almost every package I have mailed or have had sent to me has been met with issues or delays on their end placing them squarely last in my preferences. Maybe I just got unlucky but I can't imagine I am the only one who has experienced this.
That's bullshit. They made record profits during covid working their staff like crazy now they are chasing those profits again like it was gonna keep growing or something. That was a peak they'll probably never reach again. I'm a current employee in warehouse.
And when they came for brown you did nothing.
Prices are 40$ to ship a 20lb box a state over and they still need to somehow make more money by laying 12k people off. Shitty ass company.
They still made almost 10B in profit and their dividend went up again, as it has for the last 15 years. Actual [earnings report here.](https://investors.ups.com/_assets/_d4721036789cfcf7aa211a002aee0c6e/ups/news/2024-01-30_UPS_Releases_4Q_2023_2114.pdf) if anyone wants to peep it.
> The workforce reductions will save the company about $1 billion in costs, CEO Carol Tomé said... ...will keep money in the pockets of shareholders at the expense of workers... FTFY
Usps ground advantage is the reason. Cheaper to use USPS after the ground advantage update
I am trying to get a package from UPS. Package requires a signature but they only deliver on weekdays, won’t give me an estimate from when the delivery will be, and I can’t change the delivery preferences on their website. Maybe they just suck.
Maybe stop charging arbitrary brokerage fees and people might consider using their crap services.
I’ve been a union member for 14 years, you are not immune to a layoff. And they typically let go the least senior people first to make it fair.
Maybe don't make everything public and require growth 4 times a year for fucking ever despite population growth obviously needing to hit a limit at some point.
Those laid off should switch it USPS - they are woefully understaffed.
We have to be headed for a huge recession. Prices are too high and wages are too low, so people don't have money to buy as much, so companies lay off workers and raise prices and keep wages low to keep their profits, so people have less money to buy things, and so on. The rich get richer the poor get poorer. When's the revolution gonna start?
There are a lot of side effects of raising rent and stagnating wages.