UPS Freight Diary:

Keep your day (errrr...night?) job!

 

I ran air freight for a little local indy for a while. Ran empty a lot. Started the day empty, went around doing pickups and then dropping them off at a dock at the end of the day. End of the day I drove it empty back to the yard, unless I was also covering nights, then I ran a load to the airport and came back empty.

Lots of LTL's run empty or near-empty trailers for repo. It's better not to, but I've been in transportation for a while and have never seen truly steady business, it's always shifting.

 

Ups has many different service levels of Air delivery. Most Air packages travel some distance on a tractor trailer. Some travel hundreds of miles on a tractor trailer and others travel thousands of miles on a tractor trailer via sleeper teams. As long as the package is delivered by the gauranteed time the customer doesn't know or care which way it travels. Most teams in the Air side of Ups work weekends because they can leave the Worldport Air Hub in Louisville on Friday, Saturday or Sunday with next day or 2 day packages and that package can be delivered Monday morning nearly any place in the country. The packages come in to Louisville on a truck or plane from all over the world, get sorted to their final city and then go back out on a tractor trailer or plane depending on which way is needed to meet the service level. I was told in 2002 that every airplane that Ups could keep out of the air by using semi trucks saved Ups $60,000. That's the main reason they started using sleeper teams in the late 90's.

 

We run empty half the time at GFS, our night transit to the warehouse from the yard most of those trailers are empty. Some of them have back hauls, but the majority of them are empty.

 

Guess I'm an idiot, I thought they'd try to put some kind of freight on the trailer both ways. Learn something new everyday

 

Not an idiot in my book. Transportation is full of counterintuitive surprises. Good old New Stanton; I remember when the Sony plant was still a nice farm.

 

I hear ya. I was just making a bad joke. Empty trailer (full of air) = "air" freight.

Also known as "sailboat fuel".

 

Now I am the idiot! Lol. That went right over my head. I was just trying to enlighten inquiring minds such as Mike and others who might care.

 

I ran a bid run to New Stanton twice a week for several years. Easiest bid I ever had except for starting my week Friday night at 9.