Think about how long 50 years is. (If you’re approaching an upcoming birthday for that milestone, maybe don’t. Think about cake and good friends instead).

Five decades. Half a century. 436,800 hours. It’s a long time.

It’s also the years of safe driving that UPS Feeder Driver Ron “The Big Dog” Sowder has just racked up. (Feeder trucks are the big semis that you see rolling down the highway. “The Big Dog” is a cool nickname for someone who’s good at what he does).

Before crossing the finish line Wednesday at UPS’s facility in West Carrollton, Ohio, just south of Dayton, Ron was escorted for the last few miles of his milestone trip by Ohio State Troopers. He was then greeted by a blast of confetti and an enthusiastic welcoming committee at the building.

UPS takes their safety seriously, as anyone who has ever set foot in one of its facilities can attest, and an achievement like this means a whole lot to the company. (In fact, UPS invested $175 million in safety training in 2011). On Thursday morning, several special UPS guests from around the country were on hand for a formal celebration at the facility.

A native of Springboro, Ohio, Ron was fresh out of the Navy when he joined UPS in 1960. Since then, he figures he’s driven more than 4 million miles; transported more than 22 million packages, and climbed into a UPS truck more than 12,000 times. Just last year he was featured on the show “American Trucker” on the Speed Channel.

According to Ron, the greatest benefit of being a UPS driver is “The future. I like that this company is always growing – Never stagnant. It’s great to be a part of an organization that is always looking ahead to what comes next.”

So now what’s next? Well, more great service and safe driving from “The Big Dog.”

You can count on that.

For years, I’ve worked behind the scenes on behalf of The UPS Foundation to coordinate the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) National Wheelchair Games.  Coordination for this event has always been a delight.  However, nothing truly compares to attending the Games with UPS volunteers, athletes, caregivers, family and friends of athletes, coaches and healthcare team members.  The excitement and energy from a host of supporters, the spirit of courage and determination from over 600 athletes and confidence that emanates from coaches are all too much to contain in one city! 

PVA was founded in 1946 to assist with a wide variety of issues involving the special needs of armed forces veterans who have experienced spinal cord injury or dysfunction.  Since 1988 UPS has provided more than $800,000 in funding as well as our logistical expertise to support the annual Wheelchair Games and PVA programs that benefit veterans with spinal cord injuries. 

The National Veterans Wheelchair Games is a multi-event sports and rehabilitation program for military service veterans who use wheelchairs for sports competition due to spinal cord injuries, amputation or certain neurological programs.  Each year, over 600 novice and experienced athletes along with their caregivers, family, friends and corporate sponsors convene for a week of competition in more than 15 events.  Many participants are inspired by their participation in the Games and go on to compete at higher levels.  Others find a new confidence and self-esteem that eventually leads to employment and success in other facets of their lives.

UPS employees stepped up and showed how much they cared for our nation’s injured veterans, with 122 UPS employees, family and friends investing more than 1,400 volunteer hours this year to stage the games.

Undoubtedly, the games inspired participating athletes to face and overcome fear with courage, demonstrate unbelievable strength versus succumbing to weaknesses and to persevere when faced with great obstacles.  The athletes were there to win!  In watching their pursuit of victory, I matured in knowledge of our support for injured veterans.  Additionally, after spending one week at the Games I recognized that I had been in the presence of authentic courage, strength and determination.  No words can ever express how grateful I am to work for a company that deeply cares about our communities.

UPSers from around the world recently were asked how they make the holidays sweeter. Here’s what some of them had to say.

John – Kentucky

Telling someone who is working at a gas station or restaurant that I appreciate what they do.

Leslie – Texas

I take in baked goods to my mother’s nursing home where she has been an Alzheimer’s patient for nearly nine years. It is very good to see their faces light up when they get something special for them. Some of these patients rarely get visitors.

Chi Wah Kwok – Hong Kong, China

Enjoying time with my loved ones.

Velma – South Carolina

What touches my heart is when I bake for someone who has nobody to care for them anymore; seeing the smile on their faces when I knock on their door with a plate of baked goodies. WOW! My heart skips a beat when I see their eyes light up with hope again, after thinking they had been forgotten. This is one of my reasons for baking for the season.

Eamon – Pennsylvania

In our house we make the holidays sweeter by not forgetting the little ones. Our dogs are so often overlooked when we make ourselves all these nice treats. We make doggie cookies and such to help them feel the holiday spirit.

Rene – Netherlands

Reaching out to the less fortunate around should be part of everyone’s December holidays. It will make you and the other warmer during the cold days.

Jennifer – Indiana

My husband, kids, and I, have a tradition each Christmas Eve. We all sit together in our family room and watch “It’s a Wonderful Life.” My children are not put off by the fact that the movie is in black and white either. They love it. We eat the cookies we had all baked and decorated together while the movie. It is just so wonderful to be all together creating these memories for our children to cherish.

Brenda – Kentucky

I always remember to help UPS sprinkle a little extra brown sugar on every batch of packages, measuring delivery time perfectly, never being a cookie-cutter company, and using all the right ingredients in the dough to grow the business.

Raquel – Sao Paulo, Brazil

Baking sugar cookies is a family tradition.

John – Arizona

It’s hard to make the holidays sweeter in tough times like this when you are trying to scrape by and provide for your family. I like to bake cookies with my kids to give out to family members as an inexpensive way to show our love for them. I’m not sure where I would be if it wasn’t for UPS. I am very grateful for the job I have. There are too many families out of work right now.

Rachel – New Jersey

Unfortunately, I lost my home to Hurricane Irene and will be spending the holidays in a hotel. I will make it sweeter by giving to families and children in need. My life will eventually go back to normal, but a lot of theirs will not. You always must give to those in need because one day you may be the one asking others for help.

Balpreet – Mississauga, Ontario

Love is the primary ingredient in having the perfect holiday. Give to those in need and don’t think about what you receive.

How do you make the holidays sweeter?

During my short spell as a driver helper, the most invaluable resources have been the drivers, who have a reflexive knowledge of their routes that borders on clairvoyant. They can tell you not only where they will be in 30 minutes, but where all of the other nearby drivers will be, which customers will need extra time, less time, one push cart or multiple ones. If something throws a wrench into the flow of their day, they are already three steps ahead of the problem and are calling other drivers for support so nothing interrupts the deliveries and pickups. The second most valuable resource is their DIAD scanner, which they have been showing me how to use throughout the week.

I won’t lie. Even though UPS just upgraded to the DIAD V, which I have personally dubbed “The Final Frontier,” for the novice like myself the DIAD scanner is not an intuitive gadget. I grew up in the Nintendo generation and we had four buttons on the controller. The DIAD has a myriad of buttons that give me vertigo when I look at it. They perform all manner of functions: scan packages, call up lists of tracking numbers, enter signatures, notes, names, void scans, etc. With every package in our system scanned an average of 16 times during transit, the importance of the DIAD cannot be underestimated. It tells both the customer and UPS exactly where your package is at all times. During the busy holiday season, that information is doubly important.

Learning to use the DIAD isn’t easy, but the drivers are masters at it. The driver tells me after the signature to push the “enter” key. Which one is that? None of them say “Enter.” Is it the one that has a half-circle on it? No, wait, the one with the check mark? Nope. How about this one that looks like a crescent moon? As I struggle with the DIAD, I suddenly hear the voice of a leprechaun in my head saying, “Yellow moons! Green clovers! Orange stars! Blue diamonds! And purple horseshoes!!!” <sigh>

While the DIAD itself is not my immediate forte, the art of stacking packages is something that I have come to pride myself on. Drivers must stack them rapidly, securely, and as high as possible, whether in a shipping truck or on a push cart. You want to move the maximum number at a time to shorten the time it takes to finish the job. All of the boxes are different sizes and shapes. Imagine if you opened up a game of Jenga and found out all of the wooden bricks were different! Upon opening a UPS shipping truck cargo door, you’re stepping into the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark – a huge room full of boxes. Your job is to start offloading them quickly, but you must be careful! Some are huge but are actually quite light (bean bag chairs). Others are small but as heavy as lead bricks (God only knows). But there is one universal truth I have learned – cardboard is just like California. At any time without warning, it can crumple and collapse into the abyss!

Remember the object of Jenga? Don’t let the stack fall. Same goes here, except this time you’re standing under it! Cardboard is not reliably stalwart and gravity is a harsh nemesis! 

I’m fairly certain the DIAD would survive the avalanche better that I would…

My stint as a driver helper passed Wednesday last night. The pace has been rapid-fire as the cargo volume heats up closer and closer to the holidays. Deliveries number in the multiple hundreds and pickups from the major retailers at the end of the day are even more numerous. Throughout all of it, I have enjoyed the experience, despite a disagreement with a delivery cart yesterday that ripped the backside of my brown pants (more on that in another blog post.)

What has amused me the most is the constant interaction a UPS driver, or anyone in a UPS uniform like myself, receives from the general public. I’ve taken to calling them “pickup” lines. Most of them are pretty common – “What can brown do for you!”, “Whoa – HOW MANY boxes are you dropping off?!”, “Whoa – HOW MANY boxes do we have to pick up?!” (That last one was me, in case you didn’t notice.)

There are the unique encounters though that make the day entertaining, and here are my top three “pickup” lines from this week as a UPS driver helper.

An older gent approached me as I was unloading the UPS vehicle and yelled out, “You doin’ a lotta fingerprinting today?” That gave me pause. I’d never equated delivering packages with CSI: Miami. “Fingerprinting?” I asked, trying not to sound incredulous. Was he crazy? Why did I forget my pepper spray? He revealed that he was a delivery person from a trucking company many decades ago and that was an old term for moving boxes. I briefly had visions of guys in pinstripe suits and fedoras waving Tommy guns. “Hot crackers! Move dem dere boxes, wise guys!”

A younger guy came up to me between truck loads and asked me how hard it was to get a job with UPS. I told him about UPSJobs.com and that there were many avenues to get employment. With a little hard work and a few years of dedication, you would have a stable job and probably move up in the company. “A few years? That’s a long time,” he replied and walked off shortly afterward. I guess he was one of many that are looking for that get-rich-quick scheme I’ve been hearing about. Had I been quicker on my feet, I would have suggested winning the lottery.

The winner goes to the man who called out to me, “You know, this is the busiest time of year for you guys.” At the time I was navigating a heavy pushcart of boxes through mall crowds to a storefront. I appreciated the information he gave me. In fact, I appreciated all of the interaction with the public. Most everyone is friendly. But this guy needs to know that I silently awarded him the Captain Obvious Medal.

Whether smack dab in the middle of the holiday season, Memorial Day weekend or any ordinary day during the year, UPS employees realize how the little things — perfectly executed — can have a huge impact.

All UPSers are directly responsible for the success of our deliveries and the satisfaction of our customers. Recently, we asked them about some of their most memorable customer experiences.

Here are a few examples of what they shared with us:

Larry – Georgia

During my initial years with UPS – at a time before tracking numbers and package visibility – I worked during the night sorts at several hubs. It was a regular practice if Christmas Eve was during the week to have packages that appeared to be presents that had been missorted that day consolidated and distributed to the management team relative to wherever they lived or were traveling to for Christmas. You cannot imagine the feeling you got when you knocked on someone’s door on Christmas day with a present and experienced the gratitude they expressed for going beyond their expectations to make their holidays special.

Bruce – New York

A while back, we managed to get Diana Ross’ dress delivered just in time for a concert at Madison Square Garden.

 Amy – Kentucky

I had a customer that exported large air freight shipments of live lobsters to Guam every Friday night. They had to move on a very specific routing, because the packaging only kept the lobsters alive for 72 hours.

I was on call late one Friday night of Memorial Day weekend when I received a call from the airline’s trucker saying that they missed the flight out. I had no idea what to do, but there was $40,000 worth of live lobsters headed back to Louisville, and I had to find a way to get them back in the tank before the time ran out.

I did not have a cell phone number for any one there, but my contact there had a somewhat uncommon last name, so I whipped out the white pages and started calling every number for that last name in Louisville. “Hello do you work at XYZ Lobster Company?” After about 10 calls, I found him. He recognized my voice, and his first response was “Why are you calling me at home?” When he heard what had happened he was ecstatic because he was on the way out the door to go to the lake when I called. Fortunately there was a happy ending – we got all the lobsters back in the tank in time, safe and sound.

Timothy – California

A manager for a nonprofit organization came running into the customer counter in a panic. She had a grant proposal that had to get to Washington, D.C., the next day. The East Coast air driver was already on his way to the airport. She thought all was lost, but I quickly processed the package and contacted the driver and asked him to meet her before the airport. The driver met her and got the document pack to the airplane in time. Our customer came in to the customer counter a day later overjoyed that their grant had gotten to D.C. in time. She let me know how much her nonprofit needed the grant to continue their work in the community. What I thought was just another day at UPS sometimes means so much more to our customers and community.

John – Missouri

About five years ago we got a new stadium in St. Louis. As the new stadium went up, the old one came down. Team ownership made available to the fans an opportunity to purchase a set of seats from the old Busch. UPS set up shop at the old Busch Stadium and got down to the business of boxing up all those seats and getting them to some very rabid fans. Each stop was a pleasure. Some were season ticket holders, some were employees, some just had to have a set, but all were excited to see me and share some of there favorite Cardinals memories.

Jason – South Dakota

The following customer letter explains my best customer experience:

“On Thursday, October 18, I needed to send an overnight package. My wife works for me and usually does all my shipping, but she was out that afternoon and this package needed to go and be delivered on Friday, so I prepared the necessary paperwork and called for a UPS pickup. What I didn’t realize at that time was I had used the Second Day Air booklet and blue label on this package. I checked the overnight box on the form and I thought everything was good to go.

The next day at around 4 p.m., I received a call from the person who was expecting the package letting me know that it hadn’t arrived yet. I asked my wife to call UPS and run a check on the package so we could determine where it was. She then informed me that it was scheduled for delivery on Monday morning. This was a major problem because the package included football tickets for a game that started on Saturday at 11:30 a.m.

I quickly called the UPS number and the person was very professional and helpful. Through a series of questions and answers she was able to tell me that my package was in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, station and was being sorted for final delivery.

She then told me that she would contact the Sioux Falls station and that they would try to locate my package, and if they were successful someone would call me. About 30 minutes later, Jason Bouwman called me and informed me he had my package in his hand. At that point in time, I was about ready to drive the six hours myself and deliver the tickets, but Jason informed me that if he could work it out around his son’s sports practice he would actually drive half way down to Sioux City, Iowa, and meet my client to deliver the package. I arranged a conference call to get us all together, exchange information and to set the meeting location.  At 9:39 p.m. later that same evening, I received another call from Jason, saying that he was with UPS and my package had been delivered.

That is what Brown did for me. After I made the mistake that caused the whole crisis, two very professional UPS employees went the extra mile to serve the customer.”

This year, for one week at the height of the holiday shipping season, I’ve left my office in public relations and become a UPS driver helper to lend a hand delivering a few of the millions of packages UPS will process leading up to December 25th. My first day was December 12th. The Friday before, I received my safety training and a few minutes learning how to use our DIAD package scanner. In the race to get the packages out, UPS hires driver helpers in droves and Atlanta is no exception. They tossed me a brown UPS pullover which isn’t quite long enough for my arms. I was reminded of stories my grandfather tells of being thrown a pair of boots that didn’t fit exactly right during boot camp in World War II. Yeah, it’s kinda like that, but once the day begins those concerns disappear.

I met the driver I would assist at a major shopping mall here in Atlanta. The first task was deliveries to some of the stores inside. Pretty straightforward. The driver would scan, I would stack. Then we’d roll ‘em over to the location. But very quickly, his vehicle was empty and it was 5 p.m. Don’t be fooled. No one was going home. That’s when a UPS driver’s day just gets started! Now it was time for pickups from the major retail stores. We navigated his brown UPS package van into the underworld of the shopping mall. Loading docks and narrow passages. Offloading the hand trucks and heading into the hallways behind the many stores. It reminded me of that scene in Terminator 2 when John Connor is in the back hallways of the mall running from that evil robot. Any minute I expected Schwarzenegger to burst through a doorway yelling, “Get down!” Yep – exactly like that.

Michael French, UPS driver helper

Our first customer had more than 80 pickups! My driver said that was nothing. The customers we picked up from were too busy during this time of the year for many pleasantries, but that’s cool because we were in just as big a hurry. We loaded the massive boxes in multiple trips. We were moving briskly with the hand trucks. Unfortunately the freight elevator is never in a hurry. The door for the elevator is about the same size as the one on Jabba the Hutt’s palace and raises only marginally faster. Next Day Air parcels are separated and go on the back lower shelf so they’ll be the first ones off before 7 p.m. at the sorting facility. The rest get stacked tightly in the delivery vehicle. Then it’s onto the next round of pickups. This time it was a designer shoe retailer. One package was going to someone named Monica in South Carolina. I considered briefly how every package has a person’s name – every box heading into a different person’s life, different experiences, a million different situations and personalities. I hoped Monica will be happy with whatever she ordered. I rapidly started to resent Santa Claus for getting all the credit.

By about 8 p.m. we were done for the evening. But now it’s the a.m. and in about 30 minutes, I will have to be ready and out the door, because there’s more deliveries today where those came from.

It’s possible that one of the most famous 19-year-old college football players learned his best moves from his dad.

Just watch UPS driver Tyrone Mathieu, age 44, manuever a package car through the tricky streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans. And deliver a package with a bright smile, much the way his celebrated son, Tyrann, delivers the football to a ref when crossing the goal line after one of his astonishing punt returns.

Tyrone has run packages for UPS in New Orleans for 20 years. His son Tyrann, aka The Honey Badger, has run down receivers and outrun punt coverage the past two years for the Louisiana State University Bayou Bengals, the No. 1-ranked college football team in the nation. Tyrann has proven so talented as a cornerback and punt return specialist that he’s a finalist for the 2011 Heisman Trophy, awarded yearly to the best player in college football. This year’s ceremonies take place Saturday evening in New York  City.

The youngster’s purple and gold LSU colors look especially good with a brown background.

“You bring the values of UPS home to your family,” says Tyrone, who married his high school sweetheart and has raised five kids with her in their east New Orleans home. “There’s no question that UPS helped shape our family.”

The accolades for Tyrann shower down. Officials with the 2011 SEC Championship Game named him MVP of that contest, primarily for a couple of dazzling punt returns – one for a touchdown – that stole momentum from Georgia and sparked an LSU win going away. The youngster is a finalist for the 2011 SEC Defensive Player of the Year, for the 2011 Walter Camp Player of the Year Award, and so on. How else do you say it? Tyrann Mathieu is the best player on the best team in college football.

The cheers come for dad, too, along Magazine Street and Chartres Street and the other narrow alleyways of the French Quarter where he delivers the goods for UPS customers. (Tyrone claims attention in his own right – he won election as King Zulu 2009 for one of the city’s best-known Mardi Gras krewes.) When Tyrone walks in a store wearing the UPS uniform and bearing a package, customers proudly introduce him to shoppers – that’s the Honey Badger’s dad!

Fans at LSU nicknamed Tyrann the Honey Badger after linking his feisty, outsized performances on the football field (Tyrann stands just 5’ 8” tall and weighs just 175 pounds) with the fighting prowess of a small but ferocious animal called the honey badger. The weasel-like creature is tireless in combat and wears down larger foes with incredible speed and unlikely strength.

The rules have always been simple and clear at the Mathieu household.

“We never put athletics ahead of the rest. Our philosophy is God first, family second, academics third,” Tyrone says. “It’s just like the way we set goals at UPS. You have plan A. You plan for that goal. You don’t give up.”

Tyrone says UPS matured him and helped him distill the values he has brought home from work to his family for the past 20 years.

“I was 24 years old when I started with UPS,” he says. “For me, it was like the Marines in brown.

“I learned really, really good discipline with this company. I learned that you work hard and it counts for something. I learned to be respectful, because we serve customers and they expect a respectful attitude. And you bring all that home, those same values, to help guide your kids.”

LSU faces the University of Alabama for the national title on January 9 at the Superdome in Tyrann’s hometown of New Orleans.

You might have read there was a race on November 6 up in New York City. Gathered a lot of media attention. Some guy ran 26.2 miles in just over two hours. Along with about 47,000 of his closest friends. Pretty impressive.

What you may not know is some 300 UPS volunteers managed to move 46,795 bags of personal gear—sweats, shirts, hats, keys, cell phones—from the start of the race on Staten Island all the way to Central Park on race day. All in the span of a few hours.

The runners get the glory, and they deserve it, but here’s to the UPSers who gave up their weekends to pull off their own remarkable feat.

Saturday, November 5, 8 a.m. Pre-race Day

Volunteers are out in force to move delivery trucks through the streets of Manhattan to Staten Island. UPS employees; husbands and wives, sons and daughters, all make this possible. It really is a family affair.

I ride with Antonio from New Jerseyon the lead vehicle in the Big Brown Truck Parade through the city. He’s been here all 15 years of UPS’s involvement, happy to come back every year.

On Staten Island, it’s all about staging. We have 74 trucks scattered across three areas. Each is numbered for easy identification and will carry the personal belongings for up to 1,000 runners to the finish line in Central Park on Sunday.

Sunday, November 6, 4 a.m. Race Day

The first of the volunteers arrive at in Manhattan. Buses will take us toStaten Island beginning at 5:30. Bagels and coffee are set up on tables. You can feel the excitement in the air; and the day is just beginning.

Sunday, 6:30 a.m.

At the staging area on Staten Island, Industrial Engineer Niall Kelleher is the go-to person for any and everything UPS-related at this event. He’s been doing this for nine years.

Each area accommodates 16,000 runners, who trust their personal belongings, neatly bagged, to a UPS volunteer who will then load the bags into a truck to be picked up at the end of the race. Trust is the key here; cell phones, car keys, warm-ups all go in the bags.

If you’re not wearing running gear, you become, by default, someone who knows what’s going on. People of all nationalities are asking you questions. Somehow we manage to communicate and get them to the right place.

Sunday, 10 a.m.

Trucks are sealed and we’re ready to go back through the streets of New York and into Central Park. Now 74 delivery trucks strong, with police escort, it’s quite a sight. Do we stop for traffic lights? Fuhgetaboutit!

By the time we arrive at Central Park, the winners are already in. The rest will finish throughout the day, hours after we are set up and ready with their gear.

No one appreciates this effort more than the runners. We greet them with smiles and congratulations, hand them their gear, and send them on their way. We’ll do this 47,000 times today.

Exhausted, barely able to stand, but they still have the energy to say, “Thanks.”

Some go further. “You guys are rock stars,” one says; another, “Thank God for UPS.”

Sunday, 3 p.m.

A mass of runners works its way through the gauntlet of Central Park. Tens of thousands trudge past the line of trucks, looking for the vehicle that carries their goods. Amazingly, they all walk away, bags in hand, out of the park.

Sunday, 5 p.m.

It’s getting dark and the runners are still coming in. It’ll be hours before the last UPS volunteers pack up to leave. Tired, we make the trip back toManhattanwhere we’ll pack up our gear, say our good-byes, and go home to rest for the few hours left in our weekends.

We love logistics. Every mile of the way.

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Have you ever wondered how runners in the ING New York City Marathon this Sunday will get their coats, sweats, street shoes and keys from the start to the finish? One thing’s for sure: you won’t see them lugging backpacks through the streets of New York City!

They do what a lot of us do when we need something important delivered – they rely on UPS.

For the 15^th consecutive year, UPS will be trusted to deliver runners’ personal effects to Central Park where they will pick them up at the end of the race.

Long before most of us are even awake on Sunday morning, more than 300 UPS volunteers will collect specially designed tote bags containing gear for as many as 45,000 marathon runners. A parade of 75 UPS package cars, with police escort, will then make a massive same-day delivery of all of the runners’ belongings to the finish line.

Now, that’s logistics!

Did you know?

• UPS volunteers (including family) will contribute over 3,500 hours for the entire marathon.
• Each package car carries the personal belongings of up to 850 individual runners. It takes 75 package cars to complete this massive project.
• Cost in tolls just to transport personal belongings is $4,160.
• Before the race, each runner knows which package car his or her belongings will be on—and exactly where it will be located in Central Park.
• 1996 was the first year that UPS moved the runners’ belongings. Only 40 cars and a little over 80 volunteers were needed to support the race back then.

Check out some of the photos from last year’s event:

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