I was thinking of getting a job as a loader at UPS and was wondering if anyone knows what it’s like to work for this company…especially doing this particular job.
Thanks.
My brother worked for UPS for several years until he got fed up with being strung along as a no-benefit part-timer, always worked just up to the hourly limit to disqualify him (not unique to UPS, of course.) Anybody who expects to advance must go out as a driver. Three dents or scratches on the pretty brown truck and your career is trashed (so don’t piss off the permanent part-timers: they know where you are and will sneak up on your truck with a hammer). On the plus side, if you get graveyard shift (and you will), you have a lot of opporunity to bury you mistakes. An actual quote: “After midnight WE control reality!”
I’ve never worked for UPS, but I once worked for RPS as, I guess, what you’d call a loader.
I worked the midnight to approximately 4:30 am shift. Every night, we’d (a two-man team) unload four or five big trucks, sending the packages down a conveyor belt that ran past the 10 or 12 little delivery trucks. In addition to the unloaders, one guy was usually assigned to each little truck, and it was his job to grab all the packages that belonged on that route and load 'em in the little truck. As daylight broke, the route drivers would show up, and, as I was leaving, begin to yell at the loaders for not loading the trucks right.
In my short time there, I never did the loading job, just the unloading and dumping on the conveyor job (loading is essentially a promotion from the dumping job). It wasn’t a bad job, but you can imagine that at that time of night, most everyone is just plain angry to be there. But, the pay was above minimum wage.
Oh! And the cardboard dust is pretty bad. Can lead to some interesting nasal creations.
I’d say go for it. There are worse things you can do.
My brother in law works there now. He started right before Christmas as a part time loader. He works his ass off. You have to be quick because you get timed and graded on how fast you move pieces. You also have to be a geometry wizz to fit everything into the truck.
He works the crappy shift, something like 12-4 a.m. but does get benefits. He’s still there so it must not be that bad, if you don’t mind hard work.
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- A pal of mine did this for a while a few years back for UPS. He started out unloading trucks too -midnight to 4 AM, IIRC- and began to move into loading them when he left for another job he preferred. He was just a few months out of the marines and in very good physical condition, but commented how much hard labor it was. And loading was hard mentally, too: they use a numbering system for every two or three-block section of every street of the whole area they cover (in this case, the area was a city of 50,000 pop.), and you had to memorize it to know which box goes on what truck. - The (hourly) pay and benefits were very good (medical & dental, paid holidays, 2 wks paid vacation the first year, tuition reimbursement [-like 3 or 4 grand max] and other stuff I’m forgetting right now) considering that you don’t have to know how to do much to start but it’s hard work, it’s tough to advance and you only get 20 hours of that work a week. He only did it for five or six months. Every couple months UPS runs employment ads on radio stations here (St Louis). - MC
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I worked at UPS for about 4 weeks during college a few years back. It was all I could stand. Exposure to temperature extremes, extremely fast paced, being critiqued on your “Tetris” abilities, log jams on the line meaning pile-ups, irritable supervisors, and only one 10 minute break per 4 hour shift. You get packages down a slide into the truck, then you have to examine the zip code and make sure it’s one of the 20 that belong in your truck, then scan it for tracking, then load it tetris like. Do that a thousand times non-stop every night. No wonder they are constantly advertising for help. Their turn over is pretty high.
To be fair, UPS isn’t evil, the work is really hard. They tell you that up front and tell you if you don’t like the sounds of it leave now, before hire. Most people think they’re up to it. Many find out they’re not. And UPS does pay well and have good promotion policy - if you can stick out the crap work for 2-5 years. Drivers make pretty good money (maybe $60k) but the waiting list for the Portland hub was something like 9-12 years. Flipping burgers pays less but is easier. Oh, I also lost about 10 lbs. of fat working there.
Be prepared to bust your ass - that’s what working at UPS is like. My best friend in college is now the manager of a facility for UPS in Roanoke, having been the manager of a small facility on VA’s Northern Neck. He started out as a loader here in Richmond and the got promoted to driver, then into management.
The work at the loading level is physically demanding. The stress level is high. The pay is very good and, if you can hack it, the chances for promotion are high once you’re full-time.
Several of our friends went to work for Rob while in school. One last about 3 hours and just walked out.
Posters say the pay is very good. How good is that?
IIRC, I was getting about 9 bucks an hour when I worked for UPS. I did Unload first, then loading and later “pickoff”, just grabbing the boxes off the line. Never got a payraise, but I think they considered anything over 20 hours a week overtime.
It was a nice job for when I was in college, but I only worked there for 8 months or so.
Capiz:
I’ve never worked for UPS, but I did see Cast Away…
No, really: I remember an article in the Business news a while back praising UPS’s brilliant decision. The turnover among drivers was high, which hurt profits because it took new drivers a long time to learn routes.
So, they did some research and discovered that drivers quit because they hated the back-breaking work of loading their trucks. So, UPS took that responsibilty away from them and started hiring grunts to do the loading.
Just know what you’re getting in to.
I’ll search for the article. If I find it, I will post a link here.
This thread will do better in IMHO. I’ll (oof) move it over there for (puff puff wheeze) you.