I never realized how dangerous my job was – until the crashes started adding up.

Earlier this month a UPS plane ‘was destroyed after it impacted the ground shortly after takeoff’ from Louisville, Kentucky, killing all three people on board. Along the path of destruction, eleven more lost their lives and twenty-three others suffered mostly minor but still life-altering injuries.

Though it didn’t attribute a cause or make any safety recommendations, the preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) did cite ‘evidence of fatigue cracks in addition to areas of overstress failure’ in the hardware attaching the jet engine to the left wing, with ‘the left engine and pylon separating from the wing’ and bursting into flames. Most of the fuselage was consumed by fire after it crashed into a nearby petroleum recycling facility.

The NTSB investigating team also noted that the three flight officers had thousands of hours of combined experience with this make and model of airplane (the MD-11), and that the ‘accident airplane’ was in full compliance with all periodic inspections and routine maintenance over its nearly 93,000 hours of flight time, involving 21,043 ‘cycles’ (takeoffs and landings).

In other words, this tragic crash, involving a 34-year-old aircraft, may very well be a case of structural failure and not the result of any human error. It’s much too soon to hear anything definitive, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the NTSB ultimately finds that crews both on the ground and in the cockpit had done everything right, and that there was nothing that had been overlooked or could have been done differently to avoid this horrific incident.

Now, I don’t work for UPS’s air operation, nor do I work anywhere near Louisville. Still, as a UPS driver I found myself greatly affected by this crash – perhaps even more than if it had been a commercial passenger flight, because it affected mostly people on the job.

We don’t often expect to be seriously injured or killed on the job, but I ponder that possibility with some regularity. Not just because someone might actually (try to) harm me; and not even because my own dad was killed on the job as a delivery driver; but also because of the simple fact that every day I work with and around dangerous equipment (principally a large motorized vehicle) in a dangerous work setting (American roads).

In fact, depending on exactly how you measure ‘dangerous,’ the Transportation and Warehousing industry, of which United Parcel Service is a part, ranks anywhere from first to sixth place among the most dangerous industries in America by the National Safety Council. The data show that it’s right up there with Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, and Hunting; Construction; Education and Health Services (!); and Government (!!) as the top industries for work-related illness, injury, and death.

Consequently, I think it’s safe to say that UPS is obsessed with safety. I hear about it every day, multiple times a day. It’s just good business practice – not being safe gets expensive quickly!

There are safe working methods for everything at UPS. How to climb up and down stairs safely. How to lift and lower packages safely. How to carry those packages or load them safely onto a carry aid. How to walk safely to and from the delivery point. How to place packages safely at the delivery point to prevent injury or theft. How to deal safely with approved hazardous materials. And perhaps most importantly, how to operate a delivery vehicle in a safe manner at all times.

The morning meetings in my building always begin with a count of the previous day’s incidents and injuries; a recap of any that happened – occasionally some from other facilities in our region; and a reminder of all the things we’ve been trained to do to keep ourselves and those around us safe. Throughout my shift I receive short safety messages blasted out from our local office or from corporate.

I’m constantly reminded that I am responsible for my own safety and that of those around me. In particular, I’m reminded that very few crashes are truly accidents, in the sense that they’re unavoidable. Most traffic incidents are the result of human error.

As a UPS driver, whenever I’m involved in an avoidable incident that results in damage to my own vehicle or another’s property, management ‘charges’ me with the crash and it becomes part of my permanent disciplinary record. (I don’t even know what would happen if it resulted in someone else’s injury or death, but I’d have to believe that the consequences would be far worse, including termination and possibly criminal prosecution.)

The procedure for every chargeable crash is the same: a disciplinary meeting with management and a union representative, along with a brief ‘safety roundtable.’ Then a supervisor conducts a ride-along for the entire shift.

In any nine-month period, the official discipline for a first crash is a written warning; a second crash warrants a three-day suspension (without pay); and a third crash could result in termination.

For the first few years of driving for UPS I lived in a state of constant fear of being charged – and shame of having been charged – with a crash. But now, after five years of full-time driving, I think I’m finally ready to share my experiences with crashes.

I chalk most of my crashes up to a lack of experience and skill maneuvering such a large vehicle. In those first few years I just didn’t have a good feel for how long, how wide, and how tall my package car really was as it passed through actual three-dimensional space. Thus I’d occasionally bump into things or scrape along things, usually stationary objects at lower speeds.

Although I’ve been involved in a handful of additional minor incidents that I dutifully reported – including knocking loose an overhanging (dead) tree branch big enough to crack my windshield – I only have three official crashes on my record.

My first official crash happened less than a month after I completed my 30-day trial.

I was trying to exit the warehouse at the start of my shift when I struck a package car parked next to the one I was un-parking. The damage to both vehicles was cosmetic, but the incident was observed directly by my center manager who decided to throw the proverbial book at me.

The second crash I was charged with, almost a year later, is a more interesting story. It involves goats.

I’d been covering a rural route on the furthest periphery of our service area with lots of winding dirt driveways up the sides of steep hills. At the top of one such hill was a modest home with various farm animals running loose around the property.

Before I knew it, three small goats – kids? – had wandered into the cab of my package car. I decided to take a photo of these adorable creatures, which I later included in a post about all the wildlife I’ve seen on route.

By the time I returned to the package car, all the goats had exited my cab and, I presumed, left the area around my vehicle. But as I started to drive away I heard banging sounds from the undercarriage.

I stopped and climbed out quickly enough to see one of the goats run out of the wheel well and away toward safety. I drove off, counting myself lucky that nothing bad had happened to that goat. Or so I believed.

A day or two later I returned to the same address with another delivery. This time I got stuck in the snow in their steep driveway and had to ask the customer who happened to be home to help me get unstuck.

As we were working together, he shared that one of his prize goats had been killed just a few days before. He told me he knew it was the FedEx driver because he’d previously witnessed that driver almost strike one of his dogs. I offered him my condolences, and I related my story about the goats in my cab and inside the wheel well.

I thought that was the end of it. But not long after, I was pulled into the office and given the third degree by the entire management team about killing a prize goat on route. Apparently that customer had filed a claim against UPS for the loss.

I vigorously protested my innocence, reporting what the customer had told me about the FedEx driver. I showed them the photo I’d taken, which included metadata on where and when I’d taken it. I told them that I knew without a doubt that that goat was alive and ambulatory when I drove away.

I think they believed me.

Still, they had to go meet with the customer to investigate the claim. I later learned that they decided to settle it with a payout in the three (or maybe four?) figures.

From then on, until she retired, the district manager – my boss’s boss’s boss – would jokingly (I think?) refer to me as the ‘goat-killer.’

My third and most recent crash took place on November 12, 2022. I was delivering to another residence on the side of another steep hill. Despite the fact that the point where I made my turn was reasonably flat and mostly free of snow and ice, it was slick enough for me to start sliding off the driveway and into the embankment.

The good news was that a tree broke my vehicle’s fall; the bad news was that that tree broke more besides: it produced a gash in the front of the chassis nearly a foot long.

It was about that time that the powers-that-be stopped assigning me to cover rural routes. The following year I won a bid route near downtown, and I haven’t strayed very far ever since. Even my Saturday route is within the city limits. I prefer it that way.

After that first crash I remember a fellow driver trying to encourage me. He told me that it happens to every driver, and you just have to move past it. He said that he himself had had three crashes in his first three years, and then none in all the many years since. That’s pretty much how it’s played out with me – so far (knock wood).

Just this past week I was recognized at our morning meeting for three years of safe driving since that most recent incident. When my name was called, one clever driver quipped, ‘Yeah, that’s because there are no goats downtown!’

This is expected to be a historically busy week of travel, with a record-high 82 million Americans going at least 50 miles away from home for Thanksgiving. To all of them, along with the millions more making shorter journeys, I offer the same message I routinely receive from my coworkers and customers alike: Stay safe out there!