HERKDRIVER74

Check out the article in the June 4th issue of the AustinBusinessJournal written by Gary Hoover. A good one for all of the UPS pilots on this forum who feel that UPS is such a bad place to be employed! Here is a portion of the article!


Few things are as interesting to me as figuring out which companies are truly great, what makes them great and how they stay that way.
It’s a preoccupation that comes from having studied businesses big and small for almost 50 years, starting when I subscribed to Fortune Magazine at age 12 and leading me to assemble a substantial library about the greatest businesses, businesspeople and entrepreneurs of all time.

If I asked a typical group of people, or one of my Hoover Academy classes, to name the greatest American company, the most common answer might be Apple Inc. Others would name General Electric Co., while still others might say Wal-Mart Stores Inc. I have respect for all these, but I would nominate United Parcel Service Inc. Why? Let’s start with some numbers.
With a market capitalization of about $74 billion, this is the most valuable transportation company on Earth, beating No. 2 Union Pacific Corp. by about $20 billion. It is also the largest in earnings; last year the company generated $53.1 billion in revenue, earning a profit of $3.8 billion. The next largest transportation company in the world, FedEx Corp. , earned $1.5 billion on revenue of $39.3 billion. The biggest passenger airlines — Delta Air Lines Inc., United Continental Holdings Inc. and Deutsche Lufthansa — were smaller than FedEx. Old-line post office operators reported only marginally more revenue; the U.S. Postal Service did $67 billion, and the giant Deutsche Post did $71 billion.

Now let’s turn to the complexity of what UPS does. Its 398,300 worldwide employees, 80 percent of whom are in the U.S., delivered 4 billion packages and documents last year, or 15.8 million a day. It delivers to 7.7 million customers each day, covering more than 220 countries. Its fleet consists of more than 100,000 vehicles, largely the famous brown package cars. Its facilities include more than 2,000 shipping facilities, 40,000 drop boxes and more than 4,000 UPS stores.

ShyGuy

Yet they still have 100 pilots somehow on furlough. Oh, and hired non-union management pilots, from what I hear.

To Stay or Go

Only 43 haven't been offered recall, but your point is duly noted.

The management here sucks. They make money despite themselves.

FR8TFLYER

Interesting article. The place still SUCKS, the management sets the tone!

Shockwaves

What happened to July's recall?

Zoso

Herkdriver, just because UPS is a wildly profitable and stable company as a whole, doesn't mean that it's a stable job for the pilots who fly here. They were making billions a quarter when they laid off a bunch of our pilots and left them in Anchorage Alaska.

I'd even be willing to say that UPS is less stable for any future new hire pilot, so don't come here if/when we start hiring again unless you're prepared to be furloughed.

UPS has such a massive network that they'll find a way to move the boxes.

Jetjok

So I'm wondering how one can determine which companies are truly great and which ones are not so much. Did you use Wikipedia, or just Google "Truly Great Companies"? It must have taken you, what, 5 or 10 minutes to amass all your data. The internet is a fantastic tool, but statistical data alone, without any empirical data does not allow one to come to a truly great conclusion, in fact, and more specifically, when it comes to "Great Companies", I'd suggest that it's not only about how much money they make, nor the complexity of the operation, nor the size, but how they make their money, as well as how they treat their employees, who are actually the ones making it for their company. How can a company be "truly great", if they treat all of their (direct labor) employees like crap? Did you even bother to talk to one UPS employee? Perhaps you should, then report back.

JJ

USMCFLYR

JJ -

Are you asking these questions of HERKDRIVER74, expecting him to answer on behalf of Gary Hoover, or think that he has some in-depth insight to Gary's investigative reporting methods?

USMCFLYR

jungle

This will sound crazy, I know, but isn't it the mark of a good company to balance resources to demand?

My guess is that we are going to see more of that over the next two years by a lot of companies.

Zoso

Yeah jungle, I'm sure the families in Alaska (might as well be a foreign country) appreciated being laid off by this "good company" after UPS turned down the IPA's job saving program which easily would have saved UPS more money in the long run than the furlough did.

Try to pay attention to the discussion.