Category: Industry News

Carlton Rose, president – global fleet maintenance at UPS, can rattle off a long list of alternative fuels and energy sources used by his fleet. Available equipment runs on compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied natural gas (LNG), battery power, hybrid platforms, and propane. By 2025, 40% of his ground equipment will run on alternative energy sources.

And he insists the work supports more than his fleet alone.

“We just didn’t do it for UPS. We’ve done it for the industry,” he said during an executive roundtable at ACT Expo in Long Beach, California. Every purchase helps to establish the scale that lowers costs. The technology evolves as well. “This is a team effort throughout this industry.”

Still, Rose wondered why his fleet should need to pay a premium for the emerging technology – especially since early adopters serve as rolling labs for the equipment.

“The economics and the environment, at some point they have to intersect,” he said.

Consumers are making more online purchases than ever. For the transportation companies making sure all these goods get where they’re supposed to go, it’s been a very profitable shift.

For Atlanta-based shipping giant, UPS, a surge in ecommerce sales helped it rise to the No. 100 spot on this year’s Forbes Global 2000, our annual ranking of the world’s largest companies based on a composite of sales, profits, assets and market value. That’s best among all transportation companies, and it seizes the sector’s top spot from rival FedEx, which checks in this year at No. 162.

UPS—which claims Amazon as its largest customer—recorded annual revenue of $97.2 billion in 2021, up from $84.6 billion in 2020. And it turned a $12.8 billion profit, up from $7.7 billion. Those numbers mirror a broader surge in the ecommerce market. Online shoppers spent more than $870 billion in the U.S. last year, per government data, up 10% from 2020 and 44% from 2019, when the total was just $600 billion.

Footage from a doorbell camera has emerged showing an intense race to the door as both USPS and UPS arrive at the same time to deliver packages. The rivalry amongst the various courier companies is not new and is often well documented between the big 4 of USPS, UPS, FedEx and now Amazon.

It is not common however, to see these rivalries play out in real time in the real world, but that’s what has been caught on a Ring doorbell camera. Unfortunately there is no clue as to where this event took place, however you can see the footage below. The TikTok video has now been viewed over 5.6 million times.

@livinglavidacastillo

USPS vs UPS 🤣 📬 ✉️

♬ original sound – LivingLaVidaCastillo 🏰

It’s the company’s latest play in connection with its massive shipping and logistics operations.

Amazon has already become the most dominant online retailer, and it’s poised to take over the delivery space next. The ecommerce giant announced the launch of its Buy with Prime program on Thursday; the service provides third-party retailers access to the company’s extensive shipping and fulfillment network, even for orders on non-Amazon sites.

Retailers using the service will have the option to attach the Prime icon to items on their website that are eligible for free two-day or next-day delivery. Additionally, Prime members will be able to use the payment and shipping information associated with their Amazon accounts to place an order. It’s a major opportunity for Amazon to cash in, as sellers will pay various fees for payment processing, fulfillment, storage and more.

In this particular study, the autonomous vehicle assists the delivery person in making deliveries.

“The vehicle drops off the delivery person at one location. They serve customers by delivering packages on foot, and then the vehicle picks them up at an alternate location. So what does that do for the delivery driver? It removes the need to find parking where you leave a vehicle by itself, as well as it removes the delivery person’s walk back to the vehicle,” Reed said.

The United Parcel Service has used a similar approach during the holiday season in Baltimore, for instance, by putting an extra delivery person onboard its trucks. The model proposed by Reed considers upgrading the technology of the vehicle instead. But which approach ultimately saves more money? On one hand, there’s the extra cost of the additional driver; on the other hand, there’s the extra cost of autonomous technology.

“Given the wage cost and increased productivity, we show that the autonomous vehicle model is more cost-effective than putting an additional person on a traditional vehicle,” she said.