UPS Trying to Eliminate Left Turns
This post was published 2 years 3 months 10 days ago which may make its actuality or expire date not be valid anymore. This site is not responsible for any misunderstanding.In an order to save fuel UPS is using software to dramatically reduce the number of left turns their drivers take.
It seems that sitting in the left lane, engine idling, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear so you can make a left-hand turn, is minutely wasteful — of time and peace of mind, for sure, but also of gas and therefore money. Not a ton of gas and money if we’re talking about just you and your Windstar, say, but immensely wasteful if we’re talking about more than 95,000 big square brown trucks delivering packages every day. And this realization — that when you operate a gigantic fleet of vehicles, tiny improvements in the efficiency of each one will translate to huge savings overall — is what led U.P.S. to limit further the number of left-hand turns its drivers make.
The company employs what it calls a “package flow” software program, which among other hyperefficient practices involving the packing and sorting of its cargo, maps out routes for every one of its drivers, drastically reducing the number of left-hand turns they make (taking into consideration, of course, those instances where not to make the left-hand turn would result in a ridiculously circuitous route).
… anti-zoolander.
Nice one, Chad.
This is pretty cool to hear something like this is being done.
Dan – Single Handedly Powering UNEASY
I thought this was really, really old news, on the order of a few years old? I’ve seen it makes the rounds the past few days, and thought, “Didn’t this make the rounds a few YEARS ago?” But hey, the more people know about it, the better informed they are about the business world around them. Kudos UPS!
From what I understand UPS has GPS in all their vehicles right? Seems like they could track how long it takes to go somewhere on different routes at different times and figure out statistically what would always be the fastest possible route to go on overall. Based off of previous data.
Really doesn’t seem like it’d be too hard mathematically if you were getting all the data. Maybe a 400 hour job to build the system or so.
Is this for real? I thought this was a joke!
Hmm, my comment got moderated… I guess you didn’t like what I said ;)
Guess they’ll be spending all those savings in changing left tires more often as the vehicle will mostly be making right turns (external tyres suffer more wear and tear)
@Larry – Sometimes mine have done that too, I think its more of a spam-control thing thats done automatically than the authors picking and choosing which posts are shown.
I wonder if the RIAA attorney fees are cheaper than the lost profit of record sales because of file sharing…hhhmmm…me thinks not!!
So…what if it takes too many left turns for UPS to get to my house???