Check out this tracking log of a package which is in transit to me:
HODGKINS, IL, US 03/23/2006 9:43 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
03/23/2006 12:16 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
COMMERCE CITY, CO, US 03/22/2006 2:51 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
03/22/2006 12:59 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO, US 03/21/2006 10:54 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
03/21/2006 10:10 P.M. ORIGIN SCAN
03/21/2006 6:04 P.M. PICKUP SCAN
US 03/20/2006 4:49 P.M. BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
It departed Commerce City, CO at 2:51am, and arrived in Hodgkins, IL 8 hours and 25 minutes later (according to the tracking page, all times are local times, and there is a one hour difference between CO and IL). That’s distance of 993 miles, which works out to 118 miles per hour!
Either that driver was making stellar time, or it went this leg in a plane. Is that likely?
The package left the sort facility in Commerce City, CO just before 3 AM on 3/22, and arrived in Hodgkins, IL just after noon on 3/23. By my count, that’s over 32 hours.
“ground” only means the most economical route…in the judgment of some B school graduate… Sure it could maybe go by air…or not, depending on the phase on the moon.
Interestingly, I sometimes do buisness with a motorcyle apparal outfit in Lubbock TX. Turns out that ALL ups from Lubbock gets trucked to Albuquerque every night. So I get next day delivery at the “ground” rate. Sweet! I say that this is interesting because UPS offers 2nd day and overnight rates at a premium on the same route. I suppose that the gaurenteed delivery times might have value to some, but rarely does any gaurantee have any practical value if the promised delivery time is missed.
As it was explained to me several years ago, they might send some packages by air if it saved them from needing another truck, and if there was space available in the air cargo container.
It would be done to maximize efficiency - the airplane is going to fly regardless, so it might as well be stuffed solid.
There are some items which are not allowed to go Air. So if they threw those on a plane instead of a truck, they could get fined by the FAA or something. So not only should they look at efficiency and cost, but also they need to look at what’s in the package before deciding to just throw it on a plane to save trucking funds.
Those things should be labeled anyway, regardless of how they’re shipped. UPS seems relatively liberal on [url=http://www.ups.com/media/en/prohibited_2005.pdf]what they won’t fly.[/url\
If you ship ground from Hawaii it will be flown to CA then delivered from there. Also note that you can’t ship ground to Hawaii. Also there was a bug in their software a few years ago where you couldn’t select ground for some zip code in Georgia. When us techs got calls from customers about it we would tell them there was a moat, and they never lowered the draw bridge.
To answer your question yes it can go air. IIRC from my time at UPS they will load the plane with NDA, then 2DA, then 3DS packages. Then fill with ground. Then anything that dosen’t get in the plane goes on the truck. This information was from about 5 years ago. Things might have changed.