Shippers prepare for the seasonal rush of packages

With the holiday shopping season officially under way, the United Parcel Service Store in Ontario intends to hire three customer service representatives to help with the holiday rush.

"Business goes up 300% to 400% or more, and we go from shipping 65 packages a day to 350 a day starting the second week of December because of the holiday rush," owner Spiro Beckas said. "We go from one pickup a day to two or three a day during the rush."

The store at 2910 South Archibald Ave. employs four workers including Spiro and his sister.

Spiro and his sister, Stacy Beckas, paid UPS about USD200,000 to franchise the package shipping store.

The two opened the store Dec. 1, 2005.

The store uses about 15 bags of peanut packing foam every 10 days during the holidays. Each bag costs about USD30. Beckas purchases the foam from local distributors.

"We plan to have a system during the holiday season where everyone will have a station and do their own job," said Liz Navarro, manager at The UPS Store in Ontario. "It will be like an assembly line so we can be fast and efficient."

Christmas falls on a Monday this year and the busiest shipping season will be Dec. 18-22. The last day for holiday shipments by UPS will be Friday, Dec. 22. But for an extra fee, customers can ship on Saturday, Dec. 23, Navarro said.

UPS plans to ramp up its Inland Empire operations for the shopping season.

The package shipper will hire 900 additional workers for its San Bernardino, Ontario, Riverside, Temecula, Barstow, Blythe, Victorville and Yucca Valley operations, UPS spokeswoman Page Dossey said.

UPS owns and operates a 675,000 square-foot distribution center in Ontario. That Ontario center is the UPS International West Coast air hub and distribution center.

UPS employs 4,500 full- and part-time workers at the hub. The center houses 20 jet aircraft and 16 feeder aircraft. The center distributes packages destined for delivery to the Pacific Rim and the western United States.

UPS held a grand opening Nov. 14 of an express freight facility at its Ontario air hub. The 51,000 square-foot freight center employs 149 people including warehouse workers and managers. The facility was built to meet freight shipment demands, Dossey said.

Headquartered in Atlanta, UPS employs 348,000 people in the United States and generated USD36.6 billion in revenue last year.

German cargo carrier DHL will deliver more than 2 million packages on its peak day in the United States, Dec. 20.

DHL hired hundreds of part-time package handlers to help meet the holiday demand, said John Cameron, DHL USA executive vice president of operations, in a Nov. 21 release. DHL added 300 daily truck routes and 63 new domestic flights a week to its regular network schedules for the holiday rush.

DHL employs 300 people at its 262,000 square-foot, USD70 million West Coast distribution center located at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside.

The German cargo carrier launched plans for expansion in the United States in June 2004 to compete with other shippers.

FedEx will extend employee hours to meet the holiday package delivery demand, spokesman Matt Ceniceros said in a previous interview.

FedEx likely will hire a small number of temporary package handlers for its ground operations to meet the holiday demand, he said.

Headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., FedEx employs more than 260,000 people.

FedEx will handle 9.8 million packages on Dec. 18. That will be the most packages FedEx has handled on a single day since it was founded in 1973.

FedEx operates three FedEx Express facilities in the Inland Empire.

The UPS package gauntlet

Customers drop packages off at a UPS store. If the parcel is unpacked, store employees will pack the item.

That package is picked up by a UPS driver who takes it to the Ontario distribution center.

Drivers focus on package pickups from 2 to 6 p.m. while deliveries are made in the morning, Dossey said.

After pickup, packages are taken to a UPS distribution facility, where they are sorted, labeled and loaded onto trucks or airplanes, depending on the destination.

The Ontario center operates seven package sorting shifts a day.

"We added a small shift from noon to about 4 p.m. in Ontario one year ago because of the increase in demand," Dossey said.

Packages are driven or flown to another UPS distribution facility, sorted again and loaded into delivery trucks. Those trucks deliver packages to final destinations.

During the Christmas rush, drivers deliver their loads, come back, reload and go out again because package volume increases so much, Dossey said.

When the holidays roll around "I'm packed," said John Lemelin, a UPS delivery driver. "The volume of packages just jumps and it gets nuts around here," Lemelin said while delivering packages at the Victoria Gardens Center in Rancho Cucamonga Nov. 20.

Packages contain gifts, computers and other items. UPS exclusively ships computers for Hewlett Packard as well.

UPS has shipped helicopters, Koala food, owls, gorillas, Keiko the killer whale from the film "Free Willy" and two giant pandas, Lun Lun and Yang Yang from Beijing to Zoo Atlanta.

"If it will fit in a 727, we'll ship it," Dossey said.

"During the holidays I'll make two trips [to the truck] for one delivery because of the volume," Lemelin said. "I'll have about 50 stops during a normal delivery day, but that jumps to 74 stops during the holidays."

UPS ships about 15 million packages a day. That number will swell to more than 21 million on the package handler's busiest day Dec. 20.

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