Quote:
Originally Posted by Piotrsko
Are these contract drivers or long time employees? Haven't met one yet that was too busy to yack. I admit that this is one person's limited observation in 5 cities in 3 states
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UPS drivers work to a computer algorithm that sets their schedule based on type of delivery (house, apartment, business, etc) and locations of deliveries. UPS doesn't have contract drivers everyone is an UPS employee and represented by the Teamsters. Every route is bid by seniority so the most senior drivers take the easiest routes and the new guys get stuck with the crap routes. I’m sure there are routes that have some extra time but I didn’t work with any drivers that had extra time. During my training I worked with about a half dozen full-time drivers and all but one of them were skipping lunch and breaks to try to keep up with the algorithm. These were all mostly residential routes with 120 to 150 stops
I worked as a seasonal driver for the holiday season from Oct to the end of December. We did 2 weeks of training and then I had about 2 weeks riding with other drivers as a “driver’s helper”. I got my own route the first week of November. I was one of the few season drivers in my hub with a real route, most were doing bulk runs in rented box trucks. It is WAY harder than one might think – my first week was a disaster and I was getting about ½ the route done in 9 hours. Dispatch would send full-time drivers to me at the end of their routes and I would hand off 20 – 25 packages to them and they would help me. By the end I was running a full route on my own but it took me 2 hours longer than a full-time driver was allocated. I worked about 55 hours a week Monday – Friday and walked about 12 mile per day.
I liked it. It was completely different than my normal line of work and good exercise. Paid well too
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