There are four kinds of online shoppers. Which kind are you?

It’s almost Christmas already! Compared with the previous two years, this year’s winter holiday season (‘peak’) seems to have flown past!

Any other time of the year, the UPS warehouse where I work is largely empty after all the package cars drive away with their loads. By contrast, all through peak, piles of packages are left all throughout the building.

This is what peak is all about: lots and lots of extra packages that can’t fit on the existing fleet of ‘Browns’ – or even the additional box trucks, minivans, and sport utility vehicles UPS rents for the season from area U-hauls.

Every year UPS hires tens of thousands of additional drivers to handle the seasonal spike in package volume. Some of these ‘peak drivers’ wear the brown uniform and drive a Brown or a rental on their own ‘peak route.’

But many of these temporary hires are paid to deliver packages using their own vehicles – they’re personal vehicle delivery drivers (‘PVDs’) who wear their own clothes while earning a mileage allowance in addition to their hourly wage. (For the final decade or so of his life, my dad was a full-time permanent PVD, albeit for a local company, not UPS.)

Some full-time drivers shuttle loads in their package cars (or occasionally a trailer in tow) to PVDs they meet up with out on route. I did this more than once last peak season.

Other PVDs pick up their loads directly from the warehouse. I saw this play out on a day I wasn’t assigned to my own route. Thus I stayed behind just long enough to see what happened with all those extra packages.

What I saw was a surprising variety of private vehicles driving into the just-vacated building and parking near their assigned package piles. The PVDs then loaded their packages into their vehicles and drove back out, armed with a paper manifest and (I presume) some kind of scanning device.

Meanwhile, still other PVDs work from self-storage units miles away from the hub warehouse. That’s where my day took me next.

As an ‘extra’ that morning I located an empty Brown in the ‘yard.’ I worked my way through the PVDs to not one but two large piles of packages in the warehouse. By the time I’d loaded both of these piles onto my package car – taking care to keep them separate – it was nearly as full as if I’d been assigned my own route. I then drove these two loads to a self-storage facility about 20 miles away, where two PVDs were waiting for me.

Neither of these drivers had vehicles large enough for all the packages I’d brought them. They loaded some into their vehicles and the rest they stowed in the storage unit to return to and deliver later on that day. Because of all the packages in the storage unit, both PVDs now had enough work to keep them busy for the rest of the day.

I noticed something interesting as I unloaded my package car. I’d already spent a lot of time covering the routes in this particular area, so I was pretty familiar with its people and places. As I rechecked each package before handing it to its assigned driver, I realized that the majority of them were addressed to customers I already knew.

In other words, the same people who account for most of our delivery business the rest of the year, also account for much of our delivery business – including the increase in volume – during peak. They’re just ordering more packages.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by this. Having driven for UPS for more than two years now, I’ve learned that most people’s package-delivery patterns are pretty stable. Sure, there’s usually some ebb and flow over time, or a temporary lull or spike around a certain event or season – like peak – but most people fit one of several different profiles:

1. Never Customers. As surprising as it may sound, there are still plenty of folks out there to whom I never deliver. There are some houses I never stop in front of, some rural driveways I never drive down. As popular as e-commerce is nowadays, it’s not a universal way of life. I have to believe that some can’t, some won’t, and some simply don’t shop online, due to habit or personal preference or whatever.
   
   I don’t know what percentage of US homes fits into this category, but I suspect that it’s higher than most people would guess. While it varies by neighborhood, most days I’m probably delivering to no more than one in twenty homes, and some areas it’s easily less than one in 100.
   
   Of course some of these people are probably just having their orders delivered to their workplace or an Amazon locker, which means they really belong in one of the other categories I list below.
   
2. Occasional Customers. Some people receive deliveries only once in a while – say, a few times a month or less. It’s hard to guess what these folks are ordering online so infrequently, but there must be something they need or want that they can’t get from the store down the street or across town.
   
   The customers who greet me with much anticipation and excitement are usually in this category. Since they’re only getting packages occasionally, it’s a special event when one arrives – it must feel a little bit like Christmas to them.
   
   Many of them like to tell me the story of their delivery. I can’t explain it, but it’s common for these folks to feel compelled to share what it is they’ve purchased and why.
   
3. Frequent Customers. In every neighborhood there are delivery stops that I’m not at all surprised to find on my manifest. It doesn’t take me very long on a particular route to figure out which customers receive deliveries once a week or more.
   
   Some frequent customers are operating home-based businesses. I’m astonished by the many numbers, varieties, and locations of businesses being run out of private residences. (Also garages, workshops, even self-storage units!) Often I’m delivering some kind of raw materials, tools, or supplies the business requires to make or ship whatever product it sells.
   
   For example, the amazing Austin Coulson builds custom vehicles to help fund his ongoing renovation of his family ‘barndominium.’ Not only is he a gifted craftsman, he does a great job depicting his work on both projects in short videos.
   
   Other frequent customers are dedicated online shoppers. They purchase many of their ongoing household needs online in lieu of driving to and from brick-and-mortar stores. A higher concentration of these customers are located in the more affluent outer suburbs and the exurban areas beyond them.
   
   Since these customers are in frequent contact with their drivers, it’s not uncommon for them to be waiting, or at least readily available, when their delivery arrives. And they tend to be friendly and helpful, as these interactions are routine and ongoing. Plenty of them ask about their regular driver by name when I’m covering their route.
   
4. Everyday Customers. Lastly, on any given route there’s a handful of addresses that I deliver to every single day, without fail. This is not hyperbole; it’s literally every damn day. In fact, these customers are so relentless that I’m quite surprised when one of them is not on my manifest for the day.
   
   Everyday customers get a lot of packages – and not just because I’m delivering to them daily. These folks consistently receive two, three, four or more packages per day.
   
   They’re often from a single shipper: Amazon or one of the national retail chains, or Home Shopping Network or QVC. Each item is packaged individually so as to send them out without delay. But they end up being shipped and delivered together – yet in separate packaging – with the other items the customer ordered. So I’m usually carrying at least one armload of packages to their doors.
   
   Then there are the returns. It’s estimated that online shoppers now return anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of the things they buy online – more than $100 billion worth in 2020. That’s a whole lot of merchandise e-retailers still haven’t figured out what to do with.
   
   Every day I go out with one or more return shipping labels (‘call tags’), a disproportionate number of which go to everyday customers. This means that not only am I dropping off a lot of packages to them, I’m also picking up a fair number from them to bring back to the warehouse.
   
   One might think that I’d get a lot of face time with everyday customers. Not so. Although I recognize their names and addresses, I don’t often interact with them directly. If I do see them at all – which is rare – it’s when I’m back behind the wheel of my package car, ready to drive away. As I face the house again, I’ll catch a glimpse of the front door closing, the packages already scooped up and brought inside.

To sum up, whether during peak or non-peak, UPS deliveries are not distributed evenly across a population of (actual or potential) customers.

In fact, the distribution of UPS deliveries is just one application of the robust Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule, wherein 80 percent of business comes from 20 percent of customers. I see this play out every day at work, regardless of my assignment.