Has anyone ever worked for UPS as a package handler?

[TurtleCrusher]

If so, what was it like? Especially your first few weeks.

Thanks in advance!

 

[RossMAN]

Yes and at the same facility you'd be working at

 

[Svnla]

I did it as a package handler and driver helper a few years ago when I was in college.

All I have to tell you is fast pace and more fast pace. If you are overweight and out of shape, don't even bother.

I recommend bring a large juge of ice water because you WILL need it. A pair of study but comfy work boots and loose clothes.

 

[FoBoT]

whaT about gloves, is this a situation where gloves help or hinder

 

[SKORPI0]

Worked as a loader at the Hodgkins, IL hub for a month spring 1999. Turnover of employees crazy , they pretty much trained you for a week then expected to do your job at a certain pace. Managed to load 2 53' trailers on a 6 hour shift by the time I quit. Could do the job, but the dust inside the trailer and the noise of the conveyors with the packages moving all over the building drove me nuts.

I know somebody who works as a delivery driver and claims to make about $85k/year. Forget about free time though, UPS will be your life 6 days/week.

 

[Svnla]

whaT about gloves, is this a situation where gloves help or hinder

It depends on you. I tried both (with and without gloves) and I think it was the same in my experience. Keep in mind that I am in the South and it was freaking hot in the summer.

 

[RossMAN]

whaT about gloves, is this a situation where gloves help or hinder

Gloves were more of a hindrance, you're going to get a little dusty and dirty anyway. I guess depending on the type of gloves, it may give you a little more traction on the 999999999999999 packages flying by on the 10000000000 miles of conveyor belts.

Bring at least a liter of frozen water, wear COMFORTABLE walking shoes with good support, and comfortable clothes. It's a hell of a work out and not that pleasant in the summer where the temperature gets pretty toasty.

 

[Proprioceptive]

I worked as a package handler/loader for FedEx. I hated every minute of it. Two months and I was gone. I was only making $8.90/hr with a raise to $9.50 if I'd stayed another month. I was in a smaller market, so it wasn't crazy hectic, but it was still quite the workout, especially since I had the route with all the auto dealerships and hardware stores. After two trucks of tires and pressure washers I was ready to fly the white flag.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Gloves were more of a hindrance, you're going to get a little dusty and dirty anyway. I guess depending on the type of gloves, it may give you a little more traction on the 999999999999999 packages flying by on the 10000000000 miles of conveyor belts.

Bring at least a liter of frozen water, wear COMFORTABLE walking shoes with good support, and comfortable clothes. It's a hell of a work out and not that pleasant in the summer where the temperature gets pretty toasty.

That's awesome you've worked at the same place. Would jeans, military black Bates boots and a black hoodie by fine? Pre-load is on the bottom, colder half.

Also, is it cool to wear headphones and what not after I get a hang of the job?

 

[JEDIYoda]

Yes and at the same facility you'd be working at

Yeah i saw that bronze statue they erected of you right outside the facility!!

 

[RiDE]

Yes and at the same facility you'd be working at

Holy shit its RossMAN!

 

[Merad]

I worked at a local hub loading the delivery trucks for about 2 years. The job is so easy a retarded monkey could learn how to do it it's just physically demanding. At the center where I worked most of us loaded 3 trucks with each truck averaging 6-800 packages per day. However I was always at the head of the belt and had to do a lot of sorting, so I probably touched 10000+ packages per day.

It's a decent job if you're in college or planning to stick around and become a driver. If you do want to be a driver tho check ASAP what the wait times are like at your center, as everything there is done on seniority. And I would definitely try gloves. Your hands will take a lot o wear & tear otherwise.

 

[spaceman]

everyone needs their package handled at some point

 

[Zedtom]

I have a friend who has a son that works there. He's been doing the same job for almost ten years and they keep telling him he will eventually get a shot at being a driver. He still lives at home so he likes it because he spends all his money on his car.

He's got a cocky attitude since he's in the union but ten years of throwing boxes without a promotion is just a dead end job with benefits.

 

[buck]

I did for a short time in college. Great gobs of gooseshit batman that job sucked. I lasted maybe three weeks.

I couldn't get the beeping out of my head for a month.

 

[Abel007]

Holy shit its RossMAN!

 

[slightlyhuman]

yes. have gloves on standby. lift from the knees. hope you're not splitting the belt, FUCK that. lots of water. getting a huge load of paper sucks weenis. don't fall into management. good exercise for sure. you don't get insurance until a year. peak season sucks. drivers are douche bags. don't let them boss you around. do an adequate job and if they cry about it tell them to load the truck next time.

 

[xBiffx]

Not UPS, FedEx Ground but it was RPS back then. First few weeks took some definite getting used to. First it was the hours 1am to 9am. Sleep was "different" back then. Then was all the whirlwind of lifting. Unloading the main trucks to the conveyor was the hardest job because everything else in the facility moved at the pace you set, which was never fast enough. Sorting the main conveyor into delivery trucks was much easier on the bod but harder on the head because you have to keep track of which of the 4-5 trucks you loaded the package belonged to. Then you had to figure out what shelf to put it on so that the deliveries were organized by how the driver's route was.

It wasn't easy, but it was fun. Plus you don't have to pay for a gym membership.

 

[slightlyhuman]

That's awesome you've worked at the same place. Would jeans, military black Bates boots and a black hoodie by fine? Pre-load is on the bottom, colder half.

Also, is it cool to wear headphones and what not after I get a hang of the job?

take a radio instead. because if you have phones in and some d bag down the belt is yelling at you saying you missed pkgs you're going to get fired.

 

[slightlyhuman]

also, only job i've ever said fuck it and quit without notice. fuck ups.

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

I had been trying to get job at UPS for YEARS. I even had a friend who worked in corporate & she wasn't enough to get me in. Although I don't think she cared to try & get me in either.

However, I did work in warehouses throwing boxes on/off for about a year.
Some places had work gloves on hand. But most didn't. Don't count on them to.
When handling vast amounts of boxes, either you're going to tear up your hands, or your gloves, which would you prefer? I could care less if they slowed me down just a little bit, my hands were protected.
I tried many different kinds of gloves & they all were destroyed pretty quickly.
Spent $15 on best pair I could find in store. Less than 2 weeks & they were destroyed. At least my hands were safe though.

 

[Red Storm]

I remember UPS. On my very first day of working as a package sorter my immediate thought was "Why the fuck is this not color coded?!"

Whatever you do, do not do the package sorting (off the conveyor belt). Loading/unloading the trucks is much easier than the sorting job.

Oddly enough, when I worked for them all the biggest dudes were doing the easiest job of scanning and putting labels on the boxes...

 

[xBiffx]

also, only job i've ever said fuck it and quit without notice. fuck ups.

Fuck UPS or fuck ups. Big difference. You made it sound like you messed up quitting that way.

 

[drum]

I remember UPS. On my very first day of working as a package sorter my immediate thought was "Why the fuck is this not color coded?!"

Whatever you do, do not do the package sorting (off the conveyor belt). Loading/unloading the trucks is much easier than the sorting job.

Oddly enough, when I worked for them all the biggest dudes were doing the easiest job of scanning and putting labels on the boxes...

I guess it depends if you were on a high volume belt, but I thought sorting was fairly easy. I set record times on the sort tests though partially because most of the destinations were of where I was from so I knew all the zipcodes/Slics. It sucks when a wall ensues after a jam, but I liked it much better than loading and I worked there 4 years. I would do about 7500 packages in 4 hours with relatively few mis-picks. We were required to wear steel toe boots as well which I didn't mind especially after dropping an irreg on my foot.

 

[Blade44]

Let me say, I'm not usually a quitter. I quit when things absolutely are batshit crazy where any sane person would walk the fuck out.
Net result, I did after a few months. During Christmas rush.

Here is the thing. No matter how in shape you are, if you are stuck loading or unloading, you stand risk of being hurt by repetitive stress injuries. It is one hell of a workout, yes, but not a healthy one. Back injuries abound. muscle pulls and tendon strain are common. You are going to bend over to pick up the packages off the belt if you are a trailer loader when you get tired. Your legs can only stand so much. Then your back will be shot. Your first couple of weeks, no matter how strong you are, you will be sore as hell when you finish your shift. And if you work twilight, you will be so jacked up by the time you get home you won't be able to sleep. I took sleeping pills around 3 AM to finally get to sleep by 5. Slept till 3 pm, had to report to work by 4:30. Not much of a life for $8.50 an hour. I have a full time job (my own company) that suffered greatly because I could not hack doing the UPS gig and my full time job. Bad idea for me.

I am a Triathlete used to Ironman competition, I train regularly, and I hit the weight room 4 times a week. I'm pretty damn buff, but that job took it out of me. If you get stuck on a belt that has 150 packages of 65 lb facing bricks, you have to load them and stack them floor to ceiling on the trailer row after row. UPS demands neat "Walls" of packages as you are loading so there is no wasted space. Try stacking a 65 lb box 10 fee high row after row. Your shoulders, back, wrists, hands, and legs will not appreciate it. It's not like going to the Gym. You can't "take a breather". You have to work like a robot for 3 hours, until the buzzer sounds and you get a 10 minute break to run to the bathroom, chug down some water, shove a power bar in your mouth, and go back and do it again for 2 or 3 more hours. Peak season sucks, as you may work from 2 pm to 10 pm. Yes you get overtime, but you are beat to fucking death. You have to "SCAN" packages at a rate of about 1 every 8 seconds. That means, you wear a little scanner on your hand (that makes loading harder), you scan the bar code, hear a beap, and then load the package on the trailer. By load I mean HOSS it to where it fits like Tetris in a neat wall you have to build, wall after wall. God help you if you fuck up and the wall collapses.
Sometimes, the barcode will not scan. You have to manually enter the code, sometimes, the Pick-off guys fuck up and send you a package that is meant for another trailer, and you have to carry it out and drop it on the floor so it can be picked up and sent to the correct trailer. Sometimes, the barcode is so damaged you can't even read it. When there are errors like this, you have to address it with your scanner receiver, and correct it. All this takes time and fucks up your 8 second per package rate, and you'll hear about it by the Supervisor (Supe).
To top this all off, unless you are working like a freaking maniac at super-human speed, you will Never be able to keep up with the belt feed rate. You will be force fed packages so fast, they will start to back-up on the trailer conveyor, then the chute, then the main belt. This causes log jams. So you have to stop what you are doing, get up on the catwalk, and break the log jam. Time after time after time. Running back and forth.
Sound like fun?

It's a Union shop. Seniority rules. You pay Union initiation of about $150 bucks, deducted from your first four paychecks, so you end up working one whole day free every week your first month to pay the union to join. Then you have to pay them monthly, so you work a free day and 1/2 every month to pay the union. You will probably be stuck loading for 10 years, because there are going to be hundreds ahead of you in seniority to jump on an easier job or try and get a driving job. And a Driving job is NO PICNIC. Sure it pays well, but you bust your fucking ass,while others with seniority earning 4 times your pay are working 1/4 as hard.

I'd wear gloves! The kind that are fabric, with the rubber palms. They are cheap, grip the boxes well, fit your hands tightly so you have dexterity, and keep your hands from getting so beat up you will end up washing them for 10 minutes without gloves, and you may get cut and scraped without them.
Comfy shoes? Forget it if your HUB, like mine, had a mandatory Steel Toe policy. You had to wear steel toe shoes and preferably boots. Tough situation.

Oh, and after you load 1200 packages on a trailer, you then get to load "E-Regs" Irregulars that won't fit on the conveyor belt. These can be anything from Earth Mover Tires weighing 250 lbs each, to Snow Plows weighing 400 lbs each, to RailRoad Ties. ANYTHING can be shipped UPS.
You are tired from loading the trailer, then you have to load the E-Regs. Then you load another trailer, and the E-Regs. If you equated this to a Gym, you'd be doing about 100 reps of overhead press at 80 pounds for 100 sets, then work on curls, leg presses, and squats. It's just too much for the body, and in my opinion, will tear you down over time.

Basically, the job SUCKS for $8.50 an hour (Less TEAMSTER Union Initiation and monthly Dues) you will only see about 1/2 your pay for the first month. Unless you absolutely like a bust-ass workout every day, at a fast pace, with only a 10 minute break, in a very dirty environment, with NO music - UPS says NO iPods or Cell Phones in the HUBS - they assume if you have them when you leave that you stole them by tearing open a box from Amazon - ---
Then think TWICE about taking a "Package Handler Job"

There is horrific turnover. Why? I just outlined it above.

What do I really think of a UPS Package Handler Union Job? :thumbsdown: