United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) is an American multinational shipping & receiving and supply chain management company founded in 1907.[1] Originally known as the American Messenger Company specializing in telegraphs, UPS has expanded to become a Fortune 500 company[6] and one of the world's largest shipping couriers. UPS today is primarily known for its ground shipping services as well as the UPS Store, a retail chain which assists UPS shipments and provides tools for small businesses. UPS offers air shipping on an overnight or two-day basis and delivers to post office boxes through UPS Mail Innovations and UPS SurePost.
UPS is the largest courier company in the world by revenue, with annual revenues around US$85 billion in 2020, ahead of competitors DHL and FedEx.[7] UPS's main international hub, UPS Worldport in Louisville, Kentucky, is the fifth busiest airport in the world by cargo traffic based on preliminary statistics from ACI, and the third busiest in the U.S. The company is one of the largest private employers in the United States.[8] As of 2023, UPS is third in U.S. parcel volumes shipped since 2015, trailing the United States Postal Service and Amazon.[9][10]
History
Foundation
On August 28, 1907, James E. Casey founded the American Messenger Company with Claude Ryan[11] in Seattle, Washington,[12] capitalized with $100 in debt.[13] Most deliveries at this time were made on foot and bicycles were used for longer trips.
The American Messenger Company focused primarily on package delivery to retail stores with special delivery mail delivered for its largest client, the United States Post Office Department—the predecessor of today's United States Postal Service. In 1913, the company acquired a Ford Model T as its first delivery vehicle. Casey and Ryan merged with a competitor, Evert McCabe, and formed Merchants Parcel Delivery. Consolidated delivery was also introduced, combining packages addressed to a certain neighborhood onto one delivery vehicle.[13]
Operational facilities
United States
Louisville UPS Worldport
UPS’ global hub for air shipments is the Worldport, located at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. The facility contributes to the airport's status of the third-busiest cargo airport in the United States and the fifth-busiest worldwide.[58][59]
The Worldport consists of:
- 290 aircraft;
- more than 20,000 employees;
- 5.2 million square feet of building space (about 90 football fields).[60]
Finances
For the fiscal year 2023, UPS reported earnings of US$6.71billion, with an annual revenue of US$90.96billion, a 9percent decrease over the previous fiscal cycle.<[1] UPS ranked on the 2022 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.<[68]
Operations
UPS's primary business is the time-definite delivery of packages and documents worldwide. In recent years, UPS has extended its service portfolio to include less-than-truckload (LTL) transportation and supply chain services, primarily in the U.S.<[69]<[70]
UPS reports its operations in three segments:
- U.S. Domestic Package operations,
- International Package operations, and
- Supply Chain & Freight operations.
United States domestic shipping
UPS services for consumers include:
UPS also offers UPS SurePost, in which packages are handled by UPS in intermodal transit, and delivered last-mile by USPS.<[79]
Competitors
Major competitors in the United States include the United States Postal Service (USPS), FedEx, and Amazon Logistics, along with regional carriers such as OnTrac, and LSO (formerly Lonestar Overnight).<[98] In addition to these domestic carriers, UPS competes with a variety of international operators, including SF Express, Canada Post (and its subsidiary Purolator), TransForce, Deutsche Post (and its subsidiary DHL), La Poste (France) (and its subsidiary Chronopost), Royal Mail, Japan Post Service, and many other regional carriers, national postal services and air cargo handlers.
Transportation
UPS operates over 119,000 delivery vehicles worldwide, ranging from bicycles to tractor-trailer trucks.<[106] In a long-running company policy to avoid advertisement or endorsement of a vehicle manufacturer, all external manufacturer emblems and badging are removed when a vehicle enters service (whenever possible).
The typical lifespan of a UPS ground vehicle is 20–25 years (or more), lasting until the structural integrity is compromised. The company does not re-sell any of its ground vehicles. As such, retired vehicles are almost always stripped of reusable parts before being sent to be crushed/broken up. Prior to scrapping, UPS trucks and trailers have all company branding painted over and are assigned an ADA (Automotive Destruction Authorization) number and must be crushed under the supervision of UPS Automotive personnel, which records the vehicle's destruction. The only exception to this policy are vehicles taken off the road for internal company use; package cars (repainted white) are used for various purposes (typically at large hubs); older semi tractors sometimes see use as terminal tractors.
Delivery vans
UPS refers to its delivery van as a "package car". Several designs and sizes are used by the company, dependent on routes and package volume; the distinct design of the rounded "bubble-nose" front hood and upper roofline was introduced in 1965. The bodies of the package cars are manufactured by Morgan Olson (Grumman Olson), Union City Body, and
Company brand
Brown
The brown color that UPS uses on its vehicles and uniforms is called Pullman brown. Company founder James E. Casey originally wanted company vehicles to use a yellow paint scheme, but one of his partners, Charlie Soderstrom, stated that a yellow vehicle would be hard to keep clean and that Pullman railroad cars were brown for just that reason.<[11]
During the 2000s, the company used the familiarity of its color scheme in an advertising slogan: "What can Brown do for you?"<[121]
Font
UPS commissioned brand consultancy FutureBrand to develop its own font, UPS Sans, for use in marketing and communication material. UPS Sans was created by slightly altering certain parts of FSI FontShop International's font FF Dax without permission. This has resulted in an agreement between FSI FontShop International and FutureBrand to avoid litigation.<
Environmental record
As of 2013, UPS has over 104,900 vehicles in operation worldwide including nearly 7,000 alternative fuel vehicles.<[134] In May 2008, UPS placed an order for 200 hybrid electric vehicles (adding to the 50 it had at that point) and 300 compressed natural gas (which are 20% more fuel efficient, and add to the 800 it already has) vehicles from Daimler Trucks North America.<[135]<[136]<[137] The company added 200 hybrid electric vehicles to its fleet in 2016.<[138]
UPS received a "striding" rating of 80 points out of 100 totals on the environmental scorecard by the Climate Counts Group for its efforts to lessen the company's impact on the environment.<[139]
See also
- Big Brown – 2008 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner; named after the company
- Human Intervention Motivation Study
- MaxiCode – A UPS developed and utilized square barcode-like symbol that appears on their package label
Further reading
- Brewster, Mike and Frederick Dalzell. Driving Change: The UPS Approach to Business (2007) excerpt and text search
- Thomas L. Friedman, "Insourcing," in The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, updated and expanded, 2006, pp. 167–176.
- Minchin, Timothy J. "Shutting Down 'Big Brown': Reassessing the 1997 UPS Strike and the Fate of American Labor," Labor History, 53 (Nov. 2012), 541–60.
- Niemann, Greg. Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007.
External links
References
- United Parcel Service, Inc. 2024 Annual Report U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, February 18, 2025, retrieved February 19, 2025^
- Charlie Taylor. Parcel Motel owner Nightline acquired by delivery firm UPS The Irish Times, May 3, 2017, retrieved August 7, 2018^
- UPS to Acquire Ireland-based Nightline Logistics GROUP