United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE: UPS), commonly referred to as UPS, is one of the world's largest package delivery companies. UPS delivers more than 15 million packages a day to 6.1 million customers in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. Since 2005, its operations include logistics and other transportation-related areas. It has been headquartered in Sandy Springs, Georgia, USA since 1991; headquarters had previously been located in New York City from 1930 until 1975 when it moved to Greenwich, Connecticut.
UPS is well known for its brown trucks, internally known as package cars (hence the company nickname "The Big Brown Machine"). UPS also operates its own airline (IATA: 5X, ICAO: UPS, and Callsign: UPS ) based in Louisville, Kentucky.
UPS also owns The UPS Store (formerly Mail Boxes Etc.), a franchise chain which provides shipping, packaging, and copy services
System design
UPS's Parcel Network is based on a hub and spoke model. UPS operates centers which feed parcels to hubs where parcels are sorted and forwarded to their destinations. Centers typically are the point of entry for parcels and send the parcels to one or more hubs. A hub is a location where many centers send packages to be sorted and sent back out to other centers or hubs. For example, a parcel being shipped from Wilmington, North Carolina to San Francisco, California is picked up by a driver and taken to the 23rd street center in Wilmington, where it is loaded on a trailer and driven to Raleigh, North Carolina. At Raleigh, the package would join packages from all over North Carolina and be forwarded to the Chicago Area Consolidated Hub in Hodgkins, Illinois. After arriving there, it would be loaded onto a trailer and sent by rail (trailer on flat car in most cases) to the North Bay, California hub in Richmond, California where it would then be forwarded to the delivery center, loaded onto the delivery vehicle, and transported to its final destination.
UPS Facts & Statistics
- Founded: August 28, 1907, in Seattle, Wash., USA
- World Headquarters: Atlanta, Ga., USA
- World Wide Web Address: www.ups.com
- 2007 Revenue: $49.7 billion
- Employees: 425,300 Worldwide (358,000 U.S.; 67,300 International)
- Package Operations 2007 Revenue: $41.3 billion
- 2007 Delivery Volume: 4.0 billion packages and documents
- Daily Delivery Volume: 15.8 million packages and documents
- Daily U.S. Air Volume: 2.3 million packages and documents
- Daily International Volume: 1.9 million packages and documents
- Service Area: 200+ countries and territories; every address in North America and Europe
- Customers: 7.9 million daily (1.8 million pick-up, 6.1 million delivery)
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