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Context: I was a UPS drivers helper during college during the holiday seasons. This job entailed running large amounts of holiday volume packages to houses from

Context: I was a UPS drivers helper during college during the holiday seasons. This job entailed running large amounts of holiday volume packages to houses from the truck. I speculate that this is because the role of driver is a high-trust and critical operations role. This person has to reliably execute package delivery every single day regardless of the highly variable problem spaces that emerge. Without the last X mile capacity that a driver brings, all of the infra at UPS doesn’t provide value. For example a driver wakes up early every day, rain or shine (or sleet), and is accountable for making sure a truck is loaded correctly at the dock, and every package on the route is delivered. This can include packages of diamonds insured for 10’s of thousands, to hundred plus pound boxes. I only rode shotgun for a few weeks a year and it was hard work. From that POV it a seems like a fair wage for the role.

Noumenon72 3y ago
How much does this differ from the responsibilities of armored car drivers, who make $17/hour?
- scaasic 3y ago
  They should make more too.
- xnyan 3y ago
  Same reason pizza delivery (a fairly dangerous job, more likely to die on the job than a cop) makes less - It’s not as hard to train and retain armored car drivers. Armored cars make routine deliveries of exactly one product to a fixed number of regular commercial clients. General package delivery is pretty much the opposite of all of that.
justapassenger 3y ago
It’s a hard work, yes. And people should get paid for hard work. But you’re a delivery man, that’s it. In each job you need to wake up in the morning and have responsibility to do your work well. And very often you’re handling equipment/goods that exceed not only your monthly salary but your lifetime income.
- peterhhchan 3y ago
  That's exactly why they should be are so highly paid. You don't want your delivery man to be texting their friends that they just dropped off a high value package somewhere.
  - justapassenger 3y ago
    They should be highly paid, or they'll conspire to commit felonies? That's not a reason to be highly paid (and note - nowhere I argue how much they should be paid).
- gamblor956 3y ago
  What is "that's it" supposed to mean here? Delivery, aka logistics, is one of the most important jobs in our economy. Twitter demonstrates that companies and systems could survive for months without programmers. As the early days of the COVID lockdowns demonstrated, society would collapse within days or weeks without deliverymen.
  - housemusicfan 3y ago
    > What is "that's it" supposed to mean here? It means he thinks people should be paid more than UPS drivers to sit in a fabric box all day developing fart apps for iPhone. Or WFH whilst waiting for said delivery man to show up with the box from Amazon with more unnecessary Chinese garbage he didn't need. All kidding aside, I've experienced just about every delivery company and UPS is the only one where the drivers take their jobs seriously. In comparison, I once caught FedEx performing an Ace Ventura-style penalty kick of my package onto the porch.
    - justapassenger 3y ago
      > It means he thinks people should be paid more than UPS drivers to sit in a fabric box all day developing fart apps for iPhone. Yes, there're only 2 types of jobs in the world - app developer and UPS driver. Your comment is border-line insulting to people doing other jobs, that are often much harder and dangerous, but pay much less.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
Regarding the "high trust" part, they are tracked in real-time with GPS including when they scan deliveries.
- housemusicfan 3y ago
  The tracking part is more telemetry for their delivery optimization algorithm. (Think the classic traveling salesman problem.) For example, UPS drivers are generally prohibited from making left turns because it's considered less efficient to do so. UPS drivers are personally held responsible for packages placed in their custody.
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    > For example, UPS drivers are generally prohibited from making left turns because it's considered less efficient to do so. No, they aren’t “generally prohibited from making left turns” - that’s a misrepresentation. The truth is that their routing-engine is optimised for reducing idle time waiting at lights which meant that _consequently_ their navigation+routing instructions given to the driver will avoid left-turns. That’s all it is. (When the media references this they make it sound like eliminating left-turns is the objective, rather than the end-result)
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    It's definitely used for checking and evidence of delivery. For instance, GPS coordinates are logged when parcels is marked as delivered so that know exactly where this happened, not only when.
tehwebguy 3y ago
Drivers with consistent routes doing pickups for businesses end up being the most important customer facing people for the delivery company. You can call your UPS rep and get results in a month (or your FedEx rep and get results in a year IME lol) but your daily driver can make an extra pickup or make a timeframe adjustment same-day if you ask and it’s doable.

Noumenon72 3y ago

How much does this differ from the responsibilities of armored car drivers, who make $17/hour?

scaasic 3y ago
They should make more too.
xnyan 3y ago
Same reason pizza delivery (a fairly dangerous job, more likely to die on the job than a cop) makes less - It’s not as hard to train and retain armored car drivers. Armored cars make routine deliveries of exactly one product to a fixed number of regular commercial clients. General package delivery is pretty much the opposite of all of that.

justapassenger 3y ago

It’s a hard work, yes. And people should get paid for hard work. But you’re a delivery man, that’s it. In each job you need to wake up in the morning and have responsibility to do your work well. And very often you’re handling equipment/goods that exceed not only your monthly salary but your lifetime income.

peterhhchan 3y ago
That's exactly why they should be are so highly paid. You don't want your delivery man to be texting their friends that they just dropped off a high value package somewhere.
- justapassenger 3y ago
  They should be highly paid, or they'll conspire to commit felonies? That's not a reason to be highly paid (and note - nowhere I argue how much they should be paid).
gamblor956 3y ago
What is "that's it" supposed to mean here? Delivery, aka logistics, is one of the most important jobs in our economy. Twitter demonstrates that companies and systems could survive for months without programmers. As the early days of the COVID lockdowns demonstrated, society would collapse within days or weeks without deliverymen.
- housemusicfan 3y ago
  > What is "that's it" supposed to mean here? It means he thinks people should be paid more than UPS drivers to sit in a fabric box all day developing fart apps for iPhone. Or WFH whilst waiting for said delivery man to show up with the box from Amazon with more unnecessary Chinese garbage he didn't need. All kidding aside, I've experienced just about every delivery company and UPS is the only one where the drivers take their jobs seriously. In comparison, I once caught FedEx performing an Ace Ventura-style penalty kick of my package onto the porch.
  - justapassenger 3y ago
    > It means he thinks people should be paid more than UPS drivers to sit in a fabric box all day developing fart apps for iPhone. Yes, there're only 2 types of jobs in the world - app developer and UPS driver. Your comment is border-line insulting to people doing other jobs, that are often much harder and dangerous, but pay much less.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

Regarding the "high trust" part, they are tracked in real-time with GPS including when they scan deliveries.

housemusicfan 3y ago
The tracking part is more telemetry for their delivery optimization algorithm. (Think the classic traveling salesman problem.) For example, UPS drivers are generally prohibited from making left turns because it's considered less efficient to do so. UPS drivers are personally held responsible for packages placed in their custody.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
  > For example, UPS drivers are generally prohibited from making left turns because it's considered less efficient to do so. No, they aren’t “generally prohibited from making left turns” - that’s a misrepresentation. The truth is that their routing-engine is optimised for reducing idle time waiting at lights which meant that _consequently_ their navigation+routing instructions given to the driver will avoid left-turns. That’s all it is. (When the media references this they make it sound like eliminating left-turns is the objective, rather than the end-result)
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  It's definitely used for checking and evidence of delivery. For instance, GPS coordinates are logged when parcels is marked as delivered so that know exactly where this happened, not only when.

tehwebguy 3y ago

Drivers with consistent routes doing pickups for businesses end up being the most important customer facing people for the delivery company. You can call your UPS rep and get results in a month (or your FedEx rep and get results in a year IME lol) but your daily driver can make an extra pickup or make a timeframe adjustment same-day if you ask and it’s doable.