Tag: North America

Encoding center workers might have to go 750 miles to stay with postal service

Posted by | May 15, 2007 | |

U.S. Postal Service human resources representatives will return to the Beaumont Remote Encoding Center next week as the agency tries to soften the blow for the more than 900 employees who will lose their jobs when the center closes in November, a postal service spokesman said.

While workers await official individual notices to leave, U.S. Rep. Ted Poe continues his push to stop the closure, and Jefferson County commissioners might decide in coming months what they will do with the building once the government leaves.

The postal service officially announced April 20 that the Beaumont center would close by November after 13 years of operation.

Workers at the center – which is at the old Texas State Optical building at the corner of Forsythe and Pearl streets in downtown Beaumont – remotely affix address codes to mail via computer screens to help mail move more efficiently.

About 1 million images are processed there daily, and the postal service had praised the center’s workers for their output, according to The Enterprise archives.

Advances in technology have closed all but 10 of the 55 such centers nationwide.

Officials said at the time that the center’s 344 career employees and 16 managers would get a chance to transfer to other positions within the postal service within 100 miles of Beaumont.

Postal service spokesman Dave Lewin said Thursday that the range could be up to 750 miles.

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FedEx Express and Azure Dynamics enter agreement to develop Hybrid Electric Powertrain

Posted by | May 15, 2007 | |

FedEx Express announced it has signed agreements with Azure Dynamics Corp., a leading developer of hybrid-electric and electric powertrains for commercial vehicles, to develop gasoline parallel hybrid-electric powertrains for their delivery fleet.

Under terms of the agreements, Azure will supply a parallel hybrid-electric test vehicle to FedEx Express for the Ford E-450 hybrid commercial delivery van development program. Once the development phase is completed, FedEx Express has committed to purchase a minimum of 20 pre-production parallel hybrid-electric Ford E-450 delivery vans to be delivered by May 2008.

In 2004, FedEx Express introduced the FedEx OptiFleet E700, an environmentally-superior delivery truck, into its delivery fleet. With 93 hybrid-electric vehicles in service in North America that have traveled more than one million miles, FedEx Express has the largest fleet of hybrid-electric delivery vehicles of any transportation company within the United States.

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Customer Satisfaction Growth Slows, Many Companies Struggle to Keep Up

Posted by | May 15, 2007 | |

Customer satisfaction with the goods and services that Americans buy continues to improve, but at a slower rate, according to the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index.

The ACSI is up 0.4 percent to an overall score of 75.2 (on a 100-point scale), the highest quarterly national average in the ACSI’s 14-year history.

However, although customer satisfaction growth in the aggregate continues, many individual companies are falling behind. Of the companies measured in the first quarter 2007, the ACSI saw more drops than gains in satisfaction.

The ACSI has consistently predicted future consumer spending and is an indicator of financial performance at both the company and industry level, Fornell says. The latest ACSI data suggest that depending on the impact of consumer debt burden, consumer spending growth will be in the range of 3.1 percent to 3.9 percent in the second quarter of 2007.

In the first quarter of every year, the ACSI measures customer satisfaction with the quality of products and services in energy utilities, airlines, express delivery, U.S. Postal Service, hospitals, hotels, fast food restaurants, cable and satellite television and telecommunications services.

United Parcel Service Inc. scored an 81, losing to FedEx’s 84 but beating the U.S. Postal Service’s score of 77. UPS’ score in 2006 was 83.

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UPS to receive CARE's International Humanitarian Award

Posted by | May 15, 2007 | |

CARE, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty, announced this week that UPS will receive its International Humanitarian Award for Corporate Philanthropy.

UPS has contributed more than USD 1,000,000 during a 14-year partnership that has supported CARE’s work around the world. Since 1995, UPS has generously underwritten CARE’s Emergency Transportation Shipping Fund. “Having this money readily available has made it possible for CARE to prepare and respond effectively to emergencies,” said Gayle. In addition, UPS has donated to CARE’s emergency and relief efforts throughout the world, including Kosovo, Sudan, Angola, Cambodia, Vietnam, Lebanon, Haiti and Nicaragua.

For more than six decades, CARE has reflected a remarkable spirit of giving on behalf of the American people and has served as a model of how poor people around the world can be empowered to help themselves. Last year, CARE’s programs improved the lives of 55 million people through some 900 projects in 66 countries. CARE tackles underlying causes of poverty so that people can become self-sufficient.

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DHL completes system-wide sort automation

Posted by | May 14, 2007 | |

DHL has completed the sort automation of its major ground hub in Allentown, Pa. With the completion of the automation at the Allentown facility, the entire USD 160 million DHL network integration and automation initiative, which included key air and ground hubs in Wilmington, Ohio, and Riverside, Calif., is now complete.

The network system upgrades make DHL operations more efficient, increase letter-and-package processing capabilities and provide customers with increased track-and-trace package visibility. DHL projects to generate an approximate 13 percent improvement in network wide shipment capacity, in addition to improved operational efficiencies, as a result of the completion of the automation programs at all three hubs.

New state-of-the-art equipment at the Allentown facility includes shoe-sort and tilt-tray systems, loaders, unloaders, singulators, dimensional and image scanners, scan tunnels and video coding. Key customer benefits of the automation effort in Allentown include greater letter-and-package visibility through the auto sort system’s track-and-trace features as well as increased speed in the handling and processing of shipments. With the transition to auto sort functions in Allentown, letter-handling capabilities will improve by 67 percent and package throughput will increase by 85 percent.

In March 2007, automation programs were completed at DHL’s USD 70 million West Coast facility in Riverside, serving the western U.S. as well as an expanded DHL footprint for one-day ground services across California and Arizona. DHL’s principal air and ground hub in Wilmington fully completed its automation program in January 2007.

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