Category: Industry News

Pfizer Inc. has begun shipping its Covid-19 vaccine, dispatching trucks from a Michigan plant carrying the shots to health departments and hospitals gearing up to deliver the injections against a surging pandemic.

Trucks from United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. rolled out of Pfizer’s Kalamazoo, Mich., plant bound for central distribution centers and headed toward 145 health departments and hospitals around the U.S., a Pfizer spokeswoman said.

The trucks were carrying more than 500,000 doses of the vaccine, which must be kept at -94 degrees Fahrenheit.

Location tracking and priority flights are among the special treatments FedEx and United Parcel Service are planning to give coronavirus vaccines, executives said Thursday.

The shipping giants told a Senate transportation subcommittee that the vaccines will receive priority over any other items, even as the busiest holiday shipping season on record nears its peak. FedEx Express Executive Vice President Richard Smith said the company is calling it the “shipathon.”

Smith and Wes Wheeler, president of UPS Global Healthcare, expressed confidence in their companies’ abilities to get the vaccines to administration centers around the U.S., outlining how they intend to divide up the work.

United Parcel Service and FedEx Corp plan to deliver millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines before holiday gifts – giving them VIP handling that includes GPS tracking, special labels and first-loaded status on planes and trucks.

The largest U.S. package delivery companies are key partners in the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program and each has specialized capabilities to handle fragile medical products – including Pfizer Inc’s mRna vaccine that requires shipment at sub-Arctic temperatures.

“We’re giving priority to all the vaccine shipments,” Wesley Wheeler, president of global healthcare for UPS, told the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation on Thursday.

Deliveries of holiday gifts purchased online at major retailers could get delayed by something far more critical – COVID-19 vaccines.

Pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer and Moderna as early as mid-December could begin sending inoculations to U.S. healthcare workers and nursing home residents.

FedEx and United Parcel Service could make space for those shipments on cargo planes by bumping off packages from Amazon.com, Walmart, Target and other retailers.

The FBI is investigating a string of armed carjackings and robberies of FedEx and UPS trucks in D.C. and Prince George’s County, Maryland, over the past 10 days.

The FBI is looking for two people believed responsible for two carjackings and three armed robberies between Nov. 10 and Nov. 17.

D.C. police told News4 in one case the thieves told the delivery driver they were looking for the popular Sony PlayStation 5.