February 1 marks a major milestone for UPS Airlines — 25 years since our first flight on our own operating certificate. The airline set the stage for our worldwide expansion, starting with a single DC-8 flight from Louisville to Milwaukee.

The launch of the airline marked a significant change for UPS. Long-known for dependable delivery of packages across the United States, air operations enabled us to expand internationally. Now we serve more than 220 countries and territories worldwide, and UPS aircraft are a familiar sight at airports across the globe.

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Could you use some extra money to help pay for those extra holiday gifts?

A recent survey reports that Americans have spent about $650 per household on holiday gifts for loved ones over the past two years. As my household continues to grow, I’d say that number is conservative.

UPS is currently hiring approximately 1,000 seasonal employees in the Louisville area, with jobs starting at $20 an hour for full-time seasonal drivers. Driver helpers are also needed, with those jobs starting at $12.88 an hour. There’s also a need for part-time package handlers who work a few hours each day starting at $8.50 an hour. Both day and night-shift positions are available.

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The thought I kept having as I watched teams pull a UPS 757 cargo jet during the Special Olympics Plane Pull on Saturday, September 29 at the Louisville International Airport was: “That’s a pretty tough tug-of-war opponent.”

Yet time and time again, teams of 20 participants would step up to the 147,000-pound UPS browntail, size up the competition, grab the rope, and pull with all of their might, trying to move the plane 12 feet faster than all of the other teams.

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Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the official grand opening of the largest, fully-automated package handling facility in the world. Ten years ago, UPS employees, customers, board members and local, state and government officials gathered in Louisville, Kentucky for a press event to celebrate the facility’s grand opening and to be among the first to hear its new name: Worldport.

Today, Worldport handles about 130 aircraft daily and processes an average of 1.6 million packages a day, with a record 3.6 million packages processed on peak day in 2011. The facility measures 5.2 million square feet — the equivalent of more than 90 football fields — with a perimeter of 7.2 miles. It contains 155 miles of conveyors with the capacity for sorting 416,000 packages per hour.

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Did you know that UPS has a Beetle Exclusion Team? These “bug busters” work to ensure that Japanese beetles don’t catch a ride on UPS aircraft. They are assigned to all aircraft going to West Coast destinations — regions that are responsible for producing more than 60 percent of the United States’ produce and flowers. The beetles themselves are unable to fly across the Rocky Mountains area and are sometimes transported via airplane to the West Coast where, if untreated, they could be devastating to the nation’s food supplies.

The Japanese beetle invasion around Louisville (where WorldPort is located) and other gateways typically begins in June and lasts for a couple of months.  But due to a mild winter and unseasonably warm temperatures this spring, UPS bug busters are unsure how this season will play out.

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Recently UPS launched some new television ads in conjunction with the start of NCAA March Madness. One of these commercials features footage from the 1992 East Regional Finals in which the Duke Blue Devils beat the University of Kentucky Wildcats in overtime with just 2.6 seconds left on the clock.

I remember that game very well. UK was still feeling the sting from being on NCAA probation that kept them out of post-season play for two years and the team’s four seniors – Richie Farmer, Sean Woods, John Pelphrey and Deron Feldhaus along with sophomore Jamal Mashburn – gave everyone in the Big Blue Nation a much needed shot of hope. Had there been a little more time on the clock that night in Philadelphia, fate might have been kinder to the Wildcats – but it just didn’t happen.

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Around mid-March every year, a chronic and widespread delirium spreads across the U.S.that often results in a substantial loss of productivity in the workplace – or so I’ve heard. The cause, of course, is the NCAA basketball tournament, which gets underway March 13.

The championship series will be especially exciting for me this year because UPS is playing a very important behind-the-scenes role in delivering the tournament to college basketball fans.

On March 16, the court flooring that will be used in the 2012 NCAA Final Four will begin a seven-city tour via UPS Freight.  The court, which was manufactured by Connor Sport Court, will stop at select college campuses and UPS facilities to generate excitement about the tournament before finally making its way to the Superdome in New Orleans on March 23, just in time for the national semifinals.

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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.

For the ninth October, UPS employees around the world have joined with their friends and family to take part in volunteer projects in local communities.  At UPS, we call it Global Volunteer Month. 

This October, UPS expects our volunteers to complete 275,000 hours of service by painting, landscaping, and building in places like Brazil, Hong Kong, and Louisville, Kentucky.  And, we’re well on our way to reaching that goal.

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Highlighting the need for Congress to pass U.S. President Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act proposals to create jobs and invest in our nation’s infrastructure, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recently toured UPS’s Worldport facility. Also on the agenda was a roundtable meeting with local business leaders, including CEO Scott Davis.

“If our businesses are to grow and create jobs, if our economy is to climb decisively and swiftly out of its stagnant hole, we and our leaders need to be practical. In the transportation business, that means finding a way to keep our infrastructure from unraveling,” said Scott.

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