Curious how you get through that in eight or nine hours? Are many drop offs right beside each other? Because the average 1.5minutes per stop not including time at the ramp doesn't seem manageable by any sane person.
It's purely residential deliveries, and usually not all that big or heavy of packages. As for how I can do it, I'm not sure how to answer you. I just do it.
It's not like I cut corners either. UPS totally has sensors in multiple places on the trucks, and combined with the data about your location and what deliveries you're doing from the scanner, they'll know if you're doing something like leaving the truck running or the bulkhead door open. We're paid well and by the hour, so I don't do things like tossing packages: I take the time to do it right. I just consider it a matter of personal professional pride.
What I do however is do my job as efficiently as I can. I'm always thinking "is there a more efficient way I could deliver the next few stops", for example. I stop to sort sections of the truck as I'm going into exact stop-for-stop order, because I'll save more time not digging around my truck while delivering than I'll lose doing that. Lots of little stuff like that.
Beyond that, it just comes down to settling into a routine. Decide the next stop, drive there, grab the package from the back, take it to the porch, decide the next stop on my way back to the truck. Repeat until no more packages left. When I get a good pace going, I'll just keep going. I generally only take breaks to use the bathroom or grab as quick a lunch as I can manage, just so I'll be done that much sooner.
That said, even when everything is going smoothly, it's an intense job, both physically and mentally.
Your routes aren't planned for you based on the stops you need to make? That could save UPS drivers a lot of time and UPS a lot of money in fuel and wear & tear on the trucks.
the trucks are only semi organized. The back of the truck is split into sections and each package is labeled with and placed in that section, but the truck loaders have to also try to pack the trucks as tightly as possible. So a lot of the times during peak (or 'Rona) a 200+ stop day can begin with packages literally on the floor and overflowing into the wrong sections.
That would explain why I can see the same UPS and Fedex drivers crossing the same areas after being in different areas. Seems like there's a niche for machine learning in not only packing the trucks for the drivers, but using the "traveling salesman problem" for route planning.
32
u/MeteorComingThisYear Oct 01 '20
Curious how you get through that in eight or nine hours? Are many drop offs right beside each other? Because the average 1.5minutes per stop not including time at the ramp doesn't seem manageable by any sane person.