('''UPS''') () is the world's largest
Package Delivery company, delivering over 14 million packages a day to over 200 countries around the world. It has recently expanded its operations to include
Logistics and other transportation-related areas. It is headquartered in
Atlanta, Georgia .
UPS is well-known for its
Brown trucks, internally known as package cars (hence the company nickname "Big Brown", and sometimes, because of its NASCAR-related commercials, "The #88 Car".). The brown color that UPS uses on its vehicles and uniforms is called ''
Pullman brown'', after the railroad sleeper cars created by
George Pullman , which used the same color. UPS also operates its own
Airline .
Major competitors include
United States Postal Service (USPS),
FedEx , and
DHL . Historically, UPS only faced competition from USPS for the inexpensive ground based delivery market. However, FedEx recently expanded into the ground market by acquiring RPS (originally
Roadway Package System ) and rebranded it as
FedEx Ground . In addition, DHL acquired
Airborne Express . This acquisition significantly increases DHL's presence in the
U.S. which will add more competition to the ground delivery market.
On May 16, 2005, UPS announced it would purchase Overnite Corporation for $1.25 billion. This was approved by the FTC and Overnite shareholders on August 4, 2005.
UPS's Parcel Network is based on a
Hub And Spoke Model . UPS operates centers which feed parcels to hubs where parcels are sorted and forwarded to their destinations. Centers typically are the point of entry for parcels and send the parcels to one or more hubs. A hub is a location where many centers send packages to be sorted and sent back out to other centers or hubs. For example, a parcel being shipped from
Wilmington, NC to
San Francisco, CA is picked up by a driver and taken to the 23rd street center in Wilmington, where it is loaded on a trailer and driven to Raleigh, NC. At Raleigh, the package would join packages from all over North Carolina and be forwarded to the
Chicago Area Consolidated Hub in Hodgkins, IL. After arriving there, it would be loaded onto a trailer and sent by rail (trailer on flat car in most cases) to
North Bay, CA where it would then be forwarded to the delivery center, loaded onto the delivery vehicle, and transported to its final destination.
Note - HRS codes are five letter designators with two letters
being the state and three letters for the city. Operations
traditionally places state after the city whereas Information
Technology and a few other departments place the state before
the city as is done in this table.
Employees : 18,138
Delivery Fleet: 235 UPS Jet Aircraft (
As Of November 2005 )
Most UPS Airlines flights go through the UPS WorldPort at
Louisville International Airport .
- NASCAR driver Dale Jarrett has appeared in UPS commercials, and his No. 88 Ford Fusion is sponsored by the company. In most of the commercials, UPS employees (and sometimes his father, Ned Jarrett , even kids in the shopping mall where Jarrett is shopping, and well-known celebrities) constantly ask Jarrett to race their trucks, and one new ad features all company trucks' being replaced by copycats of his Ford, complete with the No. 88 and UPS logo.
- UPS's total United Way contribution of more than $57.3 million sets a new national record.
- UPS Brown is a trademark of the company. The Pantone reference for the color is 0607298.
- UPS inspired the off-Broadway musical Romance On Wheels during World War II.
- Trains News Wire (, 2005 .
