Light Bulb Quest
It’s 2023! Like a lot of people on January 1st, today I find myself reflecting on the year that has just passed and considering the year that lies ahead. I’m a big fan of observing milestones. Crossing a finish line is a big deal for me – always an accomplishment worth celebrating. But as a […]
Thanksgiving two years ago I shared my thoughts about what I was thankful for as a new package car driver for United Parcel Service. Then last year I observed Thanksgiving with a reflection on how the supply chain is really a global chain of human (inter)activity bringing our purchases all the way to our front […]
In the U.S. over my lifetime, Labor Day has served chiefly as a three-day weekend bracketing the ending of summer break from the beginning of the school year. I myself never gave much thought to the holiday until I started researching its origins. All across the country, all throughout the industrial era, the history of […]
For the past several months the eyes of the world have been on Ukraine. In a modern David-versus-Goliath scenario, Russia’s military has met tougher-than-expected resistance from scrappy Ukrainian forces – the entire Ukrainian population, really. Outmanned and outgunned, Ukrainians have nevertheless shown themselves fierce defenders of their homeland against the invading aggressors. What was supposed […]
In my last post I was feeling pretty good. I’d returned to training for a marathon after a long hiatus, and I believed my new(-ish) job as a UPS driver was helping me train stronger than ever before. Since I’d been setting new records in my training runs of various distances, I flew to Denver […]
Earlier this month the Oxford English Dictionary announced that its 2021 Word of the Year was ‘vax.’ Granted, the pandemic has continued to loom large over our culture, disrupting our politics and upending our economy. The Oxford report didn’t mention any of the other contenders, but I’ll bet that one of them was ‘supply chain.’ […]
As a new package car driver for UPS, I’ve been assigned to a particular training route for a 30-day trial period. I call it ‘the box,’ as it’s a perfect square about .75 miles on each side; perfectly flat, laid out in a simple grid. But inside this box is an amazingly rich and diverse […]
United Parcel Service is Big Business. With $74 billion in revenues and $4-plus billion in profits, it currently ranks 43rd on the Fortune 500 list of America’s largest corporations. UPS is also Big Labor. One source places its workforce of 377,640 employees worldwide as the 9th largest U.S.-based private employer. (The company website lists its […]