Driving for UPS is more than full-time work. This is why the long hours feel short.

I can hardly believe it, but a whole month has passed since my last post. Where did all that time go?

Well, to work, mostly.

Since Christmas I’ve averaged just under 48 hours per week of paid time. And since I can’t work from home, I still commute 25 minutes each way. I try to arrive about 30 minutes early each morning to learn my assignment and settle into my route and truck. That’s about six-and-a-half hours of unpaid time each week, bringing the total of work-related time to just under 55 hours.

Now, I realize that working more than 40 hours per week isn’t unusual. In fact, nearly 1 in 4 US. employees – 22.7 percent, or 32 million – worked more than 40 hours on average last year. One-quarter of America’s workforce.

It isn’t even unusual for me. I’ve worked long hours before, but driving for UPS feels different. It feels like time has sped up. I’ve already been a driver longer than a warehouse worker. How did that happen? The time has flown by. The months. The weeks. The days.

Time flies on each of my shifts. I’m in constant motion. I’m always trying to beat the clock.

The first deadline of my day is the ‘commit time’ of Next-Day Air packages, which is normally 10:30 am. I have anywhere from one to a dozen ‘airs’ to deliver around my route’s area. These are usually mostly businesses, and some are the same every day. But the lineup is always different.

It’s usually not a problem to get all my airs delivered by the commit time, especially if I leave the warehouse before 9 am. But I feel especially focused to beat that deadline and be relieved of that responsibility. Those air customers pay a premium for their packages to be delivered on time; those air packages are the ‘first-class passengers’ on my package car.

The second deadline of my day is delivering all my ‘bulk stops,’ which are also usually businesses. Some businesses have as many as 20-40 packages delivered to them. Many are on my manifest every single day.

Obviously the bulk stops take up a lot of space on my package car. Groups of packages to a single address usually sit on the floor of the cargo area, and sometimes they get in the way of other packages I need to deliver first. When I deliver all my bulk, I’m relieved of having to fight with my load to find the right package, which makes the rest of my deliveries go a lot more smoothly and quickly.

The third deadline of my day is the time of my first scheduled pickup, typically around 3 or 3:30 pm. Doing pickups means I have to stop making deliveries for a while and attend to collecting new packages on my truck. I try to do as many of my scheduled deliveries before then so I have enough space on my truck for new packages, and so I don’t confuse what’s going off my truck with what’s coming on. Nobody loads my pickups for me in a nice orderly fashion, the way my delivery packages are ‘pre-loaded.’ I do that myself, so they just go wherever there’s space.

I do have to separate out the ‘air’ pickups because those need to get to the airport by 6:30 pm. Rather than driving them there myself, or even bring them back to the warehouse by 6, I hand my airs off to another driver at an ‘air meet’ at 4:30, which is my fourth deadline of the day. Just as there’s relief in getting my delivery airs to their intended destination, there’s relief in knowing I’ve handed off my pickup airs in time for the overnight flight.

There’s another reason why I try to do as many deliveries between my airs and my pickups. It’s so I can beat my fifth deadline of 5 pm, the time when many businesses close. Most businesses are found in business districts, usually along major roads in my territory. However, a few are on side streets. If I don’t recognize the address as a business, I may not know to deliver to them before they close. That’s happened to me fairly regularly, especially when I’m covering a new route.

Especially tricky are schools. Not only are they often found on residential side streets, but many of them close well before 5. I’ve had to pay close attention to where the schools in my territory are located.

Just as not every business opens at 9 am, not every business closes at 5 pm. I’ve lucked out quite a few times, arriving at a business after 5 only to discover that their business hours extend to 5:30, 6, or later. Some businesses, like hospitals, never close.

There have also been occasions when someone is there to receive a delivery, even if the business is closed. Of course these are offset by the times I’ve arrived at a business that’s supposed to be open but there’s not even one person on-site, because of COVID or who knows what.

Now that the days are getting longer, I’ve added a sixth deadline to my shift. I try to get all my packages delivered, and possibly my empty(-ish) package car back to the warehouse, before dark. That’s a great feeling, one that should become more and more likely as we move into spring and summer. A feeling not of relief but of satisfaction.

Because I’m racing the clock all day long, I have to force myself to take the two 10-minute breaks I’m entitled to. I didn’t always take my 30-minute lunch break, even though I’m entitled to one and they’re mandated by law, because it’s unpaid and would only mean that I’d finish my shift 30 minutes later than otherwise. Then I heard other drivers tell me that they take their lunch while driving back to the warehouse, so now I do that too.

Driving back on my lunch break brings relief. It means that for the first time that day, I don’t have to hustle. I can take my sweet time getting back because I’m not getting paid for it. It’s my time. Mine and not the company’s.

So each shift is a series of contests between me and the clock. There’s definitely satisfaction each time I beat the clock, but perhaps the more significant feeling I experience is relief. I can take a breath. I can reset for the next contest.

I have more I want to write about my experience of working hours as a UPS driver. Certainly getting paid by the hour sets up a different subjective experience of time, one that feels like a game. But there’s an objective side to it as well, one that’s an actual puzzle. Look for that in a future post.