Archive
November, 2009

This corporate blog is meant to be your window into UPS, an opportunity to meet a lot of people in addition to the individual drivers who deliver your packages.  Standing behind those front-line drivers are thousands of enthusiastic UPSers who strive to serve their customers and communities, working together across time zones and more than 200 countries and territories.

Starting out, you’ll see plenty of stories about what happens at UPS during the holidays (including shipping tips).  But there’s much, much more that we plan to share.  Like personal stories on volunteerism.  Ways to connect your business to international markets.  How we’re using technology and practical solutions to reduce fuel use and improve our green business practices. Plus news updates about UPS.  We’ll feature stories from employees around the world who have all types of interesting jobs.  Think of the upside blog as a peak “under the hood” of the big Brown engine that is UPS.

Some of our stories may be humorous while others will reflect opinions that we hope spark feedback.  We’re eager to share and talk with you.  Please join the conversation.

Ready to add your two-cents? Be sure to see our tips for keeping the discussion on topic.

Norman Black and The upside team

It has been seven years now that UPS has rallied its employees all over the world to volunteer during the month of October. While UPS’s culture has always supported volunteerism, there were some concerns when we proposed the program that has become Global Volunteer Month (instead of Global Volunteer Week). Our research showed that corporate volunteerism was a new and sometimes unwelcome concept outside the United States. In Europe, we were told, volunteerism is a very personal decision unrelated to the workplace. Similarly, we were told that in Asia that most human service needs are met by families or governments and that corporate involvement might not be welcome.

But we knew that the core UPS culture has been embraced by employees throughout the world – so we decided to proceed. And the first year, we were pleased to have 1,000 volunteers in 14 countries across Europe, Asia and Latin America. When we began planning for year two - we started by asking our colleagues outside of the U.S. whether they wanted to try it again. And I knew it had caught on when their response was – “We’re going to do this again with or without Corporate.” The numbers nearly tripled in year two - to more than 3,500 volunteers in 30 countries!

I had a chance to tour one of our facilities in Germany in the early years and was amazed and thrilled to see the group Global Volunteer Week photos prominently displayed on their bulletin board. Since then, the program has grown and morphed - rallying more and more of our employees and expanding critically into the largest part of the UPS employee base in the U.S.

UPS employees everywhere have embraced the opportunity to work together to address needs in their local communities - taking on activities from helping people who are hungry, homeless and handicapped to improving the planet by planting, painting or pruning. Incredibly - this year it looks like we’ve topped 250,000 hours! That’s more than one hour per employee. What a proud moment for all of us!

Remember when you were a kid and your mom would say: “Eat your spinach. There are starving kids in Africa!” Well, these days, you don’t have to leave your neighborhood to find people in need. We’re in the deepest recession in a generation with millions of unemployed Americans. That means there’s a lot of hungry people right here at home. So when my colleague Cyndi Brandt at UPS Logistics Technologies told me about Feeding America, I was more than happy to promote how this non-profit organization is using UPS technology to help feed even more people.

Here’s the deal. Feeding America can supply seven meals for every dollar saved on distribution. By deploying our logistics technology to 60 percent of its network over the next five years, Feeding America is driving $10 million in costs out of its supply chain. With those savings, the non-profit organization is able to feed 70 million more people!

Any tech reporters reading this will be happy to know that the UPS technology at play is pretty cool. It’s called the Roadnet® Transportation Suite, and it utilizes GPS mapping technology and route planning software to plot the shortest routes between the manufacturers and retailers who donate food to Feeding America and the organization’s food banks. Lots of companies, not just non-profits, use this technology to optimize their distribution networks. Companies like Peapod, U.S. Food Service, Apria Healthcare and Office Depot to name a few.

The technology isn’t just helping to feed the hungry. It’s also green – routing nearly 200,000 vehicles a day and reducing miles driven by more than a billion miles a year. This saves nearly 200 million gallons of fuel, and nearly 2 million metric tons of CO2 emissions.

Feeding people in need and helping the environment while you do it—talk about a win-win! Now you see why this story is one I’m happy to promote. If you want to learn more about it, contact Feeding America’s Maria Hough at mhough@feedingamerica.org. Maria is their logistics guru and she’ll be happy to talk to you. Or, if you’re more interested in the technology itself, reach out to Cyndi at cbrandt@ups.com. Of course, you can always contact yours truly at donnalongino@ups.com.

An interesting footnote: The UPS Foundation has been giving to food banks for 20 years. In fact, The UPS Foundation has donated to Feeding America.

UPS celebrated its 102nd birthday last August but it marked another milestone earlier this month—10 years as a public company.

The company’s celebration was fairly low key, although Chairman and CEO Scott Davis and members of the UPS Board of Directors and Management Committee traveled back to the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell, just as another UPS CEO had done on Nov. 10, 1999.

The CEO who did the honors a decade ago was Jim Kelly, who guided the company through the laborious process of issuing an Initial Public Offering. Davis is the 10th chairman and CEO in UPS’s 102-year history and the third to spend time guiding the affairs of a “public” UPS. (The other was Mike Eskew.)

UPS, founded as a Seattle messenger service in 1907 by a 19-year-old named Jim Casey, was owned privately by employees, retirees and various foundations until that November day in 1999.  It issued 109.4 million Class B shares representing 10 percent of the company’s outstanding shares at an IPO price of $50 per share.

At the time, the $5.47 billion raised was the largest domestic IPO ever. Over the ensuing 10 years, public ownership of UPS has grown from 10 percent of the company’s stock to 70 percent.

The IPO marked just one of many milestones in UPS’s 102-year history, but it was a big one because it allowed us to leverage our financial strength to expand the business. Ten years later, UPS offers a broad range of logistics, supply chain, freight, customs brokerage, financial and retail services, all designed to help customers do business anywhere in the world.

As Davis told reporters in New York City: “I firmly believe that going public facilitated execution of UPS’s strategy to become the leading global transportation solutions provider. UPS is better positioned today than at any time in its history.”

And that was the point of marking the IPO’s 10th anniversary—the strategy that led us there is more relevant than ever.