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UPS

Quit While You’re Ahead


                                              UPS Driver Achieves 50 Years of Safe Driving

A young Navy vet who joined UPS in 1960 has just become the first driver in the company’s history to pass the 50-year mark for safe driving as a member of UPS’s “Circle of Honor.” 

Ron “Big Dog” Sowder (the nickname comes from being the company’s longest-tenured safe driver) began his UPS career 50 years ago as a package car driver, delivering to businesses and private residences. In 1976, he shifted to driving tractor-trailers on the open road and has served as a UPS feeder driver ever since. Currently, Sowder transports packages five days a week, making a 306-mile round trip between the distribution center here and the UPS Worldport® global air hub in Louisville, Ky.
Whether driving package cars or tractor trailers, the one constant with Sowder has been safety. More than 5,200 active UPS drivers currently are members of the “Circle of Honor” – meaning they’ve gone at least 25 years without an accident – but until yesterday, no driver in the company’s history had ever hit the 50-year mark.

A native of Springboro, Ohio, Sowder figures during the course of his career he’s driven more than 4 million miles; transported more than 35 million packages, and climbed into a UPS truck more than 12,000 times.


“Ron continues to set and reset the gold standard for our drivers,” said Myron Gray, UPS’s president of U.S. operations. “He is an asset to UPS, a great example for all our drivers and a leader within his peer group of Circle of Honor members. It’s operators like Ron who help ensure UPS is able to keep its promises to its customers.”

“A lot’s changed in 50 years,” said Sowder. “When I started driving for UPS, folks in cars did a better job of keeping their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road. Now it seems like anything goes – texting, putting on makeup. I’ve even seen folks reading books behind the wheel. The need for defensive driving, getting the big picture, leaving a space cushion, those are more important than ever.”

To help UPS drivers one day match or exceed Sowder’s historic mark, all drivers are taught safe driving methods beginning on the first day of classroom training, including the company’s comprehensive safety course, “Space and Visibility.” The training continues throughout their careers.

4-Traders

UPS

UPS Handhelds Learn Smartphone Tricks


UPS’ new device, which will go out to 100,000 brown-clad drivers, has some amazing features. But like any mobile device these days, it’s already on the road to obsolescence.

Given how long UPS has been using mobile devices, you couldn’t blame the company if it ended up sounding like the grumpy old man of the smartphone world: “You damn kids, I’ve been doing mobile devices for 20 years, back when those Apple whippersnappers were still tinkering with their Macintoshes. When I started wireless roaming, you had to wrangle with 200 carriers just to get across the country.”

Instead, UPS sounds just like the rest of us–eager to put the latest and greatest smartphone and tablet features to work. UPS is starting the global rollout of the fifth generation of it mobile handheld device, called Diad, and it will deploy about 100,000 of the units by the time the rollout is complete in 2013. Drivers use Diad to access and send package and delivery information, collect customer signatures, and more. While no one will mistake Diad V for an iPhone, with this version’s touchscreen, camera, speedy processor, and 1 GB of memory, at half the size of its predecessor, UPS draws more than ever on features similar to consumer mobile technology.

But UPS also faces the same harsh reality as every company using mobile technology: Technology cycle times are getting shorter, in part because consumer tech lives on six- to 18-month turns, not the three to five years business IT prefers.

UPS launched its last mobile handheld, the Diad IV, in 2004, so it’s now eight years to the widespread rollout of this new version. While Diad V will be in service for years, no doubt UPS will have to iterate to its next version much faster than in the past. Laynglyn Capers, VP of IS operations at UPS, can’t say exactly when a Diad VI might come, “but I know we’re working on it now.”


Here’s a look at the new features UPS brings with its latest mobile device:


Roaming: The UPS device is constantly monitoring wireless performance and will automatically skip to another network to keep its connection. The cellular connection is used to constantly send reports to the data center that a package is delivered or picked up, which is critical data for letting customers track packages. But beyond connectivity, the roaming feature also searches out the optimal mix of performance and cost, so if two carriers each offer sufficient performance it’ll pick the one that costs UPS the least. Pretty impressive, and a feature smartphone consumers would surely love.

Touchscreen: The new Diad has a touchscreen for the first time that should boost driver productivity. However, it doesn’t recognize gestures the way an iPhone does. It can’t do multitouch, for example, so a driver can’t pinch to zoom in on text, or use a finger to flip through screens. Gestures are one of the features Capers would like to bring to the next device. On the other hand, the screen is much more durable than a typical consumer smartphone’s. UPS puts it through a gauntlet of tests for heat, cold, drops, and rain that would kill the typical smartphone. Capers says UPS also is looking at rugged touchscreen tablets for use in distribution facilities, and he sees demand just starting to build for the kind of rugged tablet needed in that environment, and thinks vendors will get there soon.

Hardware specs: Diad V has 1 GB of flash memory, with a micro-SD slot that lets it expand to 32 GB. Its 1-GHz processor means it can run much more powerful apps than the previous version, apps that integrate via the wireless connection with server-side systems. That computer power will let UPS offer more personalized services, building on the My Choice service it launched last year, which lets customers create personalized delivery options, such as leaving packages with a particular neighbor if they’re not home.


Camera: You won’t be dazzled with the device’s 3-megapixel camera, but it’s a new feature with this device version. UPS hasn’t enabled cameras for use yet, but the idea is that drivers will use it for things like documenting proof of delivery or damage claims. UPS doesn’t expect drivers to send the images in real-time over the wireless network but instead will load them over the company Wi-Fi network when the devices are docked each night.

Navigation: The new device lets UPS load up all the route information a driver needs to go from site to site throughout the day. The devices have GPS, so UPS knows where the driver is at any time. The next leap for UPS will be providing real-time navigation, telling drivers the best way to get to their next delivery, perhaps even considering factors such as traffic congestion. Drivers always know where to go next. “What’s still left to do is help the driver get to the next place,” Capers says.

The prospect of real-time navigation shows the real power of mobile computing devices like UPS’, and it’s no different than consumer smartphones: It’s in the apps that companies build for them.


Chris Murphy  Editor, InformationWeek  

Union, UPS

Rumor Has It

     I’ve been hearing the scuttlebutt out of UPS that the next generation of the DIAD will tell you where you have to go next. It will not be for the driver tAt the PCMo pick and chose from a listing of the stops on the car. 
     We all know how flawed the traces are on many areas, and especially in extended areas the nightmare of a completely structured, unalterable trace could get to be quite humorous.
     Like we have all predicted, the day of the Robot Driver looms.












UPS

Hold Your Breath…….


            

             How did this truck not plummet into the Potomac River?

A UPS truck was unlucky enough to get caught on a Maryland bridge above the Potomac River Friday during a thunderstorm with 60-mph winds. The driver was lucky enough to avoid the water 135 feet below — by mere inches.

Authorities say the truck was kept from plunging off the Harry Nice Memorial Bridge in Charles County, Md., by “the grace of God”. Neither the driver, the truck nor the bridge sustained major damage in the incident. It wasn’t clear whether the truck was carrying any packages at the time, or if some ballast kept one fortunate UPS man from making a water delivery.

Jalopnik

UPS driver information