Service on the Ground

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UPS’s efficient, modern, technologically advanced fleet serves more than 200 countries and operates thousands of flights a day. In short order, UPS can deliver a package from China to the U.S. But, no matter how technologically advanced UPS gets, no matter how big the airline grows, those last few miles remain critical.

So, ever wonder what goes into that last mile? How each of those 15 million packages gets delivered – each day? It may look pretty easy, but it takes a lot of technology, training, and thousands of determined UPSers working together – to make it all happen. Here’s a peek at just part of the process.

It all starts with a shipping label. But not an ordinary plain-old-piece-of-paper shipping label. A really sophisticated computer-generated shipping label that goes onto all the packages in the UPS system. If you look closely, you’ll see that your label has a unique tracking number (starts with 1Z....), a barcode (which you probably would expect), and also a bunch of dots surrounding a bullseye-looking thing. That’s a UPS maxicode. And it contains all the information about your shipment and can be scanned from any angle.

So, early every morning (like 4 a.m. early) after the feeder trucks bring the packages into the UPS centers for the “pre-sort” before they go out for final delivery, that information contained within the maxicodes of all those labels – thousands or tens of thousands of them – is already uploaded into the hub’s computer system – where it is then incorporated into UPS’s Preload Assist System – or PAS.

The statistical information included here was current at the time it was published in 2007. To see more recent statistics, visit our pressroom.

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