By Rip Watson, Senior Reporter This story appears in the Oct. 18 print edition of Transport Topics.
Officials with the largest package delivery companies said they are in the early stages of preparing themselves for the familiar flood of holiday shipments.
UPS Inc., which ranks No. 1 on the Transport Topics 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in the United States and Canada, has begun hiring the first batch of seasonal workers. Those workers, expected to total 50,000 temporary staffers, represent a 21% increase above the regular workforce of 240,000 in UPS’ package business.
“In some parts of the country, hiring is going on already,” UPS spokesman Norman Black told TT. “Most of those people will be added between Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
Black said UPS hasn’t yet given a forecast for how much holiday business it anticipates. That should be forthcoming when the Atlanta-based company announces earnings on Oct. 21, he said.
“Right now, we are looking at the latest projections from economists and retailers,” he explained. “The estimates of 2% to 5% growth are all over the map.”
FedEx Corp., Memphis, Tenn. — No. 2 on the TT 100 — hasn’t yet released hiring targets for this year’s peak season, spokeswoman Carla Boyd said.
“More than 275,000 FedEx team members are busy preparing for the holidays,” she said. “FedEx is anticipating a solid holiday season and will add temporary workers as necessary.”
While the private sector is adding workers, the U.S. Postal Service, battling to control a $6 billion annual loss, has no broad hiring plans.
“We are not doing [seasonal hiring] this year because of the situation with the economy,” said Mark Saunders, a spokesman for the Postal Service. “From a national perspective, we have had tremendous advances in mail technology, so we don’t need as many people.”
The Postal Service, which has 583,000 employees, may do some seasonal hiring on a local or regional basis as needed, he said.
Besides adding 50,000 temporary workers, the same number as last year, UPS also will charter additional planes to move packages and an unspecified number of workers will be added at UPS Stores, which are franchises.
“We always see some seasonal uptick at the UPS Stores,” he added.
The staffing at other UPS units, including Freight and Supply Chain, will not be increased for the holidays because there is no business peak at that time, Black said.
Workers won’t be added overseas because those locations don’t experience the same kind of peak as U.S. carriers, he added.
“The holiday surge is a U.S. phenomenon,” he explained.
The peak day for UPS packages handled last year was Dec. 21. During that week leading up to the Christmas holiday, the company received 35 million daily online package requests.
Last year at FedEx, the company’s network of Express, Ground and Freight handled more than 50 million packages in the week that began on Dec. 14. At the busiest time, package volume was more than 70% above the average nonpeak volume of about 7 million daily packages.
