It’s hard to think the holidays are almost here! Thanksgiving is in two weeks and it’s just 45 days until Christmas. But here at UPS, we’ve been working on holiday logistics all year. We’ve added an extra 55,000 brown-suited elves who we predict will help deliver more than 120 million packages in just the week before – that’s almost 300 gifts every second on our busiest day!  Worldport in Louisville is our North Pole – where a lot of those packages pass on the way to your Christmas tree.  

This year, fashionistas will be shopping on the private-sales site the Gilt Groupe – one of the leaders in the e-retail industry and UPS will deliver thousands of those holiday orders.

Even as the Christmas and New Year festivities end, Singapore prepares for the next major celebration – the Chinese New Year. It is totally amazing how quickly the decoration on the streets, in department stores and supermarkets transform. All things nativity are gone and we now prepare to welcome the year of the rabbit.

As I look at all the transformation, I cannot help but think of the logistics involved behind them – the planning, the work, the resource allocation – and appreciate my job at UPS more.

One of the things that I enjoy about the Chinese New Year is the different types of food that are unique to the celebrations including my favorite — pineapple tarts. Pineapple tarts are golden in color and represent the welcoming of wealth into the new year.

This year, instead of buying pineapple tarts, I plan to bake them myself from a recipe I found on the Internet.  Since I have no experience in baking pineapple tarts, I bought extra ingredients in case I need a couple of tries to ensure they’re edible.

Chinese New Year stretches over a period of 15 days starting with the New Moon on the first day of the lunar New Year and ends on the full moon 15 days later. Starting on the first day of Chinese New Year, receiving red packets containing money symbolizes blessing of good luck, longevity, prosperity and good health. Normally, married adults will give out red packets to their relatives and friends.

Singapore is a multi-racial society. The interesting thing is, during Chinese New Year, people from other cultures such as Malays, Indians and Eurasians also join the Chinese in their celebration. Every year, we will invite our Malay and Indian neighbors to our house and my parents give their children red packets, too!

During this holiday season, Mother Nature delivered lots of snow to parts of the U.S. So much snow, that it impaired travel on roads and on airlines. In Minnesota, UPSers got creative and used sleds to help deliver packages to customers. The following story was originally written by Justin Luther, who is an Employee Communications Supervisor in Minnesota.

It was a snowstorm that essentially shut down the Twin Cities for a weekend.

One of the sleds used to deliver packages in Minnesota

Plows struggled to keep up with the near 20 inches of snowfall, and it took days to reach every street, which became substantially narrower than usual.

For UPS, the winter blast created challenges beyond it just being the busiest time of the year. Snowdrifts and the path of the plows left five-foot walls where walkways to houses used to be.

Northern Plains District Human Resources supervisor Sandi Brue joined a cast of management team members who were asked to don the brown uniform and report for duty to help get through the difficult conditions.

“I went to the center and they handed me a snow sled,” she said.

Sandi took the sled, got in her vehicle and followed a driver-helper team in a residential area in St. Paul, served by the Landmark Center. At her first stop, the driver gave her a street’s worth of deliveries.

 “I just kept stacking it higher and higher,” she said. “It was like the sled from ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ after a little while.”

Sandi pulled the sled up and down sidewalks and paths, reloading it with package after package, or until she delivered about 60 stops-worth.

“I was climbing through snow waist-high, occasionally sinking,” she said. “Sidewalks were shoveled, but not to the concrete, so the sleds made it so much easier and more efficient.”

Sandi had one of the 12 sleds the district purchased.

“It had been a few years since I had used a sled,” Sandi said. “Never thought that would be how I used one. But what a creative way to make sure we were getting packages to our customers.”

I have found stories in the UPS Archives that go back to the 1920s of drivers being asked by children if they delivered for Santa Claus in addition to the local department stores. Often, the drivers would confess to the hopeful child that, yes, they do help Jolly Ol’ St. Nick make his deliveries. 

The challenge for these drivers – and to some extent for the drivers today – is to get these deliveries past any children who are at home and safely in the hands of the parent. A December 1929 article in UPS’s employee publication, the Big Idea, addressed this challenge of maintaining the secrecy of these important deliveries – especially when in those days, tricycles and dollhouses came assembled without a cardboard box to conceal them. 

“Some drivers have hit upon the idea, when they see children about and have a toy to deliver, to ring the doorbell and whisper to the lady [of the house] that they are ready to help her smuggle the toy in. This courtesy is much appreciated by every mother, who thinks as much of her child’s surprise as of the toy itself.” 

Our drivers would often share stories of how they would help our customers play Santa – for example, covering items with packing blankets or first talking with the parents and arranging alternative delivery times while the child was napping… or leaving the item with a neighbor or in a special, established hiding place such as the garage.  The article encouraged drivers to “keep up the right holiday spirit” to keep the spirit of Santa Claus and a focus on customer relationships alive and well.

While today Santa’s goodies more often arrive in plain cardboard boxes, UPS drivers are still helping to deliver holiday magic with deliveries up to Christmas Eve this year. To see some of the ways that we can help you keep the holiday spirit, we have a special video at the UPS YouTube channel. To make sure that your items arrive safely and to help you play Santa see the helpful tips for packing and shipping from The UPS Store franchisee Karen Hurley.

Do you wonder who has time to do those interesting personalized holiday letters? Actually, you do, and we can help!

On top of all the holiday packing and shipping, The UPS Store locations help our customers with their seasonal print projects - from holiday cards, to personalized calendars, to family cookbooks. Curious? Read on!

At The UPS Store in the Halls Community of Knoxville, Tenn., we recently made a Christmas card for a repeat customer who started out a few years ago with a small hand-painted bookmarker that she wanted laminated for a Christmas present. This year she needed 50 prints of a hand-painted card - so lovely any card company would want to have it in their card rack. We printed the cards and included envelopes so she could mail to her many friends and family! Brittany, one of our sales associates, had the cards ready for pickup and even tied a nice red bow around them! By the way, we believe presentation is everything!

Our store manager, Elizabeth, worked on a calendar for a regular customer who needed 20 to give to her family across the country. After we printed, laminated and bound the calendars, we shipped them to the recipients, so this customer knocked off two tasks at only one stop.

Another fun, personalized gift is a family cookbook. We had one customer who prepared and photographed each dish she included in the book. The only downside - she said her husband gained 20 pounds the year she wrote her cookbook (if she made the recipes to photograph, someone had to eat them)!

As an added convenience, we offer online printing. Upload, customize, preview and submit your holiday projects anywhere and on your own time.

The UPS Store can help with more than shipping - we can help you with the logistics of the holiday season.

Packing Tips from a Holiday Veteran

I am not ready to confess publicly how many Christmases I have seen in my lifetime … but I have spent 27 of them in the shipping industry, seven of which at The UPS Store. There are a bunch of stories to tell—some that would make you cry and many more that would make you laugh!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas at The UPS Store in the Halls Community of Knoxville, Tenn.—customers are filing in and packages are piling up. We recently started a morning tackling a scooter, which after some tape measure calculations, we recommended that the owner remove the front and back tires to reduce the dimensions of the package. We saved her at least $100 in shipping costs!

Later that day, I stopped on my way home from work and picked up two large items from my friend, Carole, who is a photographer. Her task was to get large family photos to an out-of-state customer quickly, affordably and in time for the holidays. We have the perfect picture frame box (44 x 36 x 5) for this job. The next morning, the items were wrapped and packed and sent UPS Ground, which gets to her Ohio destination in two days. Wow, we are off and running and all before a cup of coffee!

With 27 years in the business, I have a lot of knowledge to share. Here are top tips for packing up gifts to help get them to their destination intact and under the tree in time for Christmas morning.

• Begin with the proper materials, including: a new cardboard box designed for shipping, professional-grade packaging tape and packaging material like foam packaging peanuts or bubble cushioning (at least two inches all around). 
• Include a label on the inside of the package with the destination and return addresses.
• Use a shipping option, like UPS, which provides a package-tracking number.
• Take batteries out of toys, electronics, etc., before shipping and wrap separately to avoid contact with metal.
• Seal home-made holiday treats in an interior airtight container or plastic bag before packing them.  Use an expedited air service, such as UPS Next Day Air®.
• Ship wrapped gifts and luggage ahead to your destination, especially if traveling by air.
• Ship as late as Dec. 23 for delivery on Christmas Eve.

As you may have heard, “We ♥ Logistics,” especially holiday logistics. Let us help so you can enjoy what the season is truly about.

From all of us at The UPS Store, we hope you have a wonderful holiday season with your family and friends!

I’ve always looked forward to the holidays.  The word “Christmas” conjures up fond memories of some of my favorite things:  baking cookies, school closing (and therefore no homework) for weeks, sledding in the Ohio snowfall, and of course the magic and excitement as a young child over what Santa would bring. 

Christmas morning as a child was the apex of the year, and I can’t imagine a child waking up with no gifts to open.  Apparently, neither can the more than 1,200 UPSers here at our corporate campus, who have adopted a local elementary school in our annual Project Angel volunteer program.

The recession has tightened the budget for many of us, and parents of the students of Fickett Elementary School have looked to UPS and The UPS Foundation over the past several years to help make the holiday brighter for their over 600 students.  For the past two years I’ve been actively involved with dozens of other volunteers in collecting, organizing, and distributing the gifts to the students, and it is a treat to see the entire process from beginning to end.

On the big day, the volunteers sort the gifts in Fickett’s gym and gather down the street to herald the arrival of Santa and Mrs. Claus, creating a parade of holiday spirit to get the kids excited (as if kindergarteners need any encouragement to get excited about something).  One by one, the classes visit the gym, where anticipation builds.  As students enter the gym they are divided into their classes.  The waiting area on one side of the gym has two UPSers, including yours truly, reading stories to the children prior to their visit with either Santa or Mrs. Claus.   This proves to be something of a challenge — what kid can pay attention to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs when there are piles of shiny boxes all over the place and Christmas carols being broadcast over the speakers?  And the questions…

“What’s in all the boxes?” (It’s a surprise!) 

” Which one is mine?”  (Santa knows which one is yours!) 

“Can I open it now?”  (Only if today is Christmas.) 

“Are you a real elf?” (Of course I am.  I was asked this last year too, and wonder now if perhaps, despite my stature, I resemble one.)

Some boxes are too large for the child to carry, some have multiple boxes attached together, some are heavy, others light.  The guessing games begin.  To maintain a level of fairness, children are not allowed to open gifts at the school — they take them home and they are opened on Christmas morning. 

But, what a wonderful Christmas morning that is, when every child receives a gift.  Without Project Angel, most Fickett students would not be so lucky.  Before we started our parade, parents stopped on their way back from dropping off their kids to personally thank us for helping out with Christmas.  Everyone seems to be tight on cash these days, but because of those willing to share their blessings, both through donating gifts and time, there is a school full of children whose Christmas will still be merry when it otherwise might not be.

As we get older we sometimes forget the magic the holidays can bring.  When you have the opportunity to provide that magic, you will be rewarded with a feeling that will last until, well, next Christmas- when it’s time to do it all again!

Thank you to all our volunteers for making this another successful Project Angel.   

Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s alone, it’s estimated that an extra million tons of waste are generated nationwide each week. You can do a lot throughout the holidays to reduce your contribution to all that trash.

Kyle Yeager, owner of an Atlanta-area The UPS Store, shares tips for recycling and reducing holiday waste.

Each peak season, UPS enlists driver helpers to pick up and deliver the influx of extra packages shipped during the holidays.  I recently talked to Todd Romantini, a driver helper in Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Todd is a marketing major at Ohio State University. During his holiday break, he has stepped out of the classroom and into a set of UPS Browns to help UPS spread holiday cheer during our busiest time of year. This is his fifth and final stint as a driver helper as he is graduating in the spring.

Q: What do you do as a driver helper?

A:  This year, I’m working at the Tri County Mall. My driver, Chris Culley, and I get two large trucks full of merchandise to unload and deliver to the mall businesses each day. We also handle the businesses’ pickups. We’re here for eight to 10 hours a day.

I’ve ridden with a driver for past holiday seasons making residential deliveries. For that, we would drive into a neighborhood and both would take packages to the houses and make deliveries.

Q:  How and why did you become a UPS driver helper?

A:  During my freshman year, I saw a UPS flier at my dorm. I knew a little about UPS’s history and reputation as a good company that promotes from within so I decided to get involved. I’ve come back every year because I know the job and enjoy it, and as a marketing major, I like learning about the supply chain and logistics part of the business.

Q: What surprised you about being a driver helper?

A:  I knew that UPS was a diverse company, but I didn’t expect it to be so close-knit. I really like the camaraderie between everyone from the people that load the cars, to the management, to the drivers. It’s interesting to hear everyone’s stories.

I also was surprised that drivers are such a big part of everyone’s routines. Some customers set aside presents for us like we’re a member of their team.

In the 1970 stop-motion Christmas classic “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” Kris Kingle saves the day by singing the song “One Foot In Front of the Other” and saving Sombertown from the evil Winter Warlock and Burgermeister Meisterburger. Quite literally, that song is music to the ears of Zappos, the e-retailer best known for selling shoes on the Internet.

Of course, there is no stop motion during the busy holiday shipping season for Zappos and UPS, when the two businesses work together like Santa and his elves to serve millions of customers from Zappos’ end-of-runway location near Worldport.