UPS increases the the delivery fleet serving the greater Seattle-Tacoma area
UPS has completed its latest regional ground package sortation and distribution hub, further facilitating commerce between the Pacific Northwest and the world. The new facility also significantly increases the UPS delivery fleet serving the greater Seattle-Tacoma area, the largest metropolitan area in the northwestern United States. Adding 777,000 square feet of new automation-driven processing capacity to UPS’s global network, the hub has created more than 800 full- and part-time jobs.
“The new Tacoma regional hub is yet another key addition to the UPS global smart logistics network, allowing us to better serve the rapidly changing business and residential needs of our customers in the Pacific Northwest,” said Joe Braham, president of UPS’s Northwest District that covers six states. “UPS has a long history of being a partner in the economic growth of this region. Tacoma is a gateway to West Coast commerce as well as international trade lanes.”
Covering an area the size of more than 13 football fields, the new Tacoma regional hub is powered by highly-automated technology that rapidly moves packages through the scanning and sorting process, capturing data to increase delivery accuracy and adding flexibility to respond to customer needs. High speed UPS Smart Label applicators place labels on packages at a rate of three per second, providing UPS employees instructions for proper routing and loading into waiting trailers headed to destinations across the country, or into package delivery vehicles bound for Tacoma-area businesses and residents.
Innovative technology provides increased speed, efficiency and flexibility to move packages within UPS facilities as well as throughout the company’s smart global logistics network. Across North America, the company is implementing additional small autonomous guided tow tractors or “tugs” to move large or irregularly-shaped packages within its hubs that are not able to be moved on conveyor systems due to size, shape or weight. UPS’s proprietary Network Planning Tools (NPT) integrate UPS’s air and ground operations across the U.S. and around the globe. NPT enables UPS to reduce time-in-transit while efficiently managing spikes in shipping volume and severe weather.
UPS also recently opened a new package delivery facility in Hillsboro, Ore. to serve the rapidly growing business and residential demand in the surrounding Portland area. Both new package processing operations are part of UPS’s enterprise-wide transformation initiatives that will add more than 5.5 million square feet of new automated sortation globally ahead of the 2020 holiday season.
