AlanBarber.Org
Monday, October 18, 2004
Working at UPS - Day 1
Well today was my first day at UPS. It was pretty boring honestly but I did expect it to be as such. For the first 4 days we’ll be doing the training system what they call Cornerstone. It’s just a mix of classroom and hand on training.
I started around 10:45am. We watched some videos about how packages travel inside UPS, hazard material handling procedures, and safety training. That lasted till around 1:30pm. We then were matched up with our training supervisors. The supervisor gave me a short tour of the facility and talked about random things. Then we got over to the area that I would be working and started doing some hands on work. I did that till 3:30pm. I went back up to the classroom and then we talked a bit longer and were taken to see how clocking out works. So I clocked out and headed home.
The location I’m at is a major hub, 4th largest in the US I believe. I’ll be working as a loader so my job will be to get into the back of a truck and load it to transfer to other hubs or distribution areas. The basic task is pretty easy. Boxes come down a chute into the back of the truck. You double check the location (zip code first, then state finally city) to make sure it’s correct. You scan them in then stack them. Do that for 3-5 hours a day and that’s your shift. You’re expected to move roughly 300 boxes an hour. You get assigned a certain geographic area which consists of usually one but maybe two trucks. You have to memorize and know all the zip codes that that truck(s) covers.
For my area that I’ll be doing I have 51 zip codes to know. The problem is that they aren’t sequential numbers. I’m actually going to handle the Akron, Ohio area. The zip codes all start with either 442xx or 443xx but they aren’t inclusive. So I need to remember that 44201, 44211, 44314, 44398 are all valid zips but 44202, 44225, 44350, 44380 aren’t valid. With time it’ll get easy to just know but starting out it’s a bit overwhelming.
Besides the basic loading of your own truck there are other tasks expected of you to do from time to time. The big duh is helping load other trucks when people get swamped. Loads usually end up coming in batches. You’ll get a few packages for a while then have maybe a hundred or more all dumped at one time. So it’s expected that the people in your zone will help out.
You’ll also work the recycler from time to time. Packages are sorted in a central area then send down conveyer belts to each zone. There’s a person called a pickoff that then sends the packages down the appropriate chutes to each of the trucks. When they see bad packages that don’t belong in the zone they send it down a recycler chute. You have to unload this chute every once in a while onto a cart and roll it over to a conveyer belt that sends the packages back to the sorters. Hence getting recycled!
The other task is doing “steel.” Steel is the slang for overweight or very large packages. The conveyer system can only handle so much weight or fit certain sizes. Anything that’s too big or heavy has to be manually moved around the facility. From time to time a little vehicle with the steel will stop and unload your zones packages. Then you have to slug your way through, figure out which truck they go to and get those monsters loaded into the trucks. Which it turns out is a common thing here because Sauders Furniture ships everything UPS and all those shipments go to this hub. When I was touring the facility just about every zone had stacks of Sauders boxes lying around.
So, that’s about it for today. I’ll do a write up for each day this week about what I learned.
on 10/18/2004 at 08:47 PM
Thanks a lot for this post. It really gave me way better of an idea of what working at UPS is like. I’m planning on applying as soon as I turn 18, and all this info is great. Thanks!