June 21 officially marks the first day of summer. Here in Atlanta, summer made its sweltering entrance last month as temperatures and humidity rose. Summer also marks the appearance of our drivers wearing the famous UPS brown shorts.

UPS first introduced shorts as a part of the driver uniform in 1991 and they’ve been a popular item ever since. As you probably guessed, one of the key reasons for offering shorts was comfort. While most drivers do choose to wear shorts in the summer, there are a few who prefer pants. UPS’s longest-serving employee, Marty Peters (now retired), once quipped that he refrained from wearing shorts because the sight of his legs were “for my wife’s eyes only.”

Conan O’Brien showed off a pair of shorts in a hilarious skit as a UPS driver trainee on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 2008. On occasion, the shorts have also inspired some friendly competition among our drivers to see who would wear their shorts past the summer months. Even the satirical spoof-news site the Onion profiled the UPS shorts as a sure sign of summer several years ago.

UPS delivers to more than 200 countries, which means our drivers encounter every climate you can image … from 100°+ degree heat in Arizona to frigid temperatures in Canada and the rainy season in China. Along with providing our drivers a variety of uniform items, we also launder the uniforms so that our drivers have a clean outfit to wear on the job. And that’s a lot of uniforms to wash when you consider there are more than 90,000 UPS drivers. In an earlier blog post, Susan Rosenberg chronicled some interesting facts about the UPS uniform.

So, back to the UPS shorts. While you’re likely to see plenty of UPS drivers wearing shorts during the summer months, fall is only 14 weeks away.

What’s your favorite story about your UPS driver in shorts? We’d love to hear from you.