Some of the people delivering your holiday packages are only around for a few weeks – but the work they do, and the lives they lead, stay with me.
Every year during the holiday ‘Peak’ season, United Parcel Service employs thousands of temporary workers to help get packages delivered on time. If you live in a densely populated area in the U.S., there’s a good chance your UPS delivery this month isn’t handed to you by your regular driver – or even a seasonal driver – but by a ‘driver-helper‘.
Many driver-helpers already work part-time in local UPS facilities and get first dibs on extra work during Peak. But demand often exceeds supply, so others are hired off the street.
Their job is simple: they’re the final link in a long, often global, chain connecting producer and consumer.
Driver-helpers ride in the jump seat of the brown package car. When the driver parks, they hop out, wait for one or more scanned packages, and carry them to their destinations. This allows the driver to stay in the cargo area, locating and staging packages for upcoming stops. A driver and helper can move faster working in tandem than a driver alone.
Some drivers hand off all deliveries to their helper. Others, like me, split the work when there are multiple stops at the same location. In some neighborhoods it’s common to have four, six, even eight Peak deliveries on a single block. That’s a lot of stops coming off the car all at once!
Not every driver gets a helper. They’re typically assigned to dense urban or suburban routes with high residential stop counts. And not every driver wants one. In my local facility, I’d guess as many drivers prefer to work alone as don’t. Still, if the workload warrants it, a helper gets assigned.
I know drivers whose Peak helper is their significant other. I know at least one who ended up marrying his helper. Some drivers work with the same people year after year. But most of us are paired with new helpers we don’t know well – or at all.
I’ve lost count of how many helpers I’ve worked with over the past five years. Each Peak I cycle through a handful before clicking with one, and then I try to stick with them for the remainder of the season.
This year it’s been Michael, Colt, Aron, Ricko, Mark, and most recently Christian. I’ve enjoyed all of them, but Christian has become my go-to helper. We spent all last week together, and I’m hoping we’re paired again this week. He hopes so too.
That’s the thing about helpers: assignments are handed out day by day. If a helper isn’t offered work, or opts out because they’re exhausted or have other obligations, that’s enough for a driver to be paired with someone new.
Breaking in a helper doesn’t take long. The job isn’t complicated, but I’m clear about my non-negotiables: seat belt at all times; three points of contact climbing in and out of the vehicle; cross the street behind the truck, not in front; place packages where they won’t be damaged or stolen.
I try to orient helpers carefully at each stop and plan a few stops ahead to build momentum. Once that happens, conversation comes more easily.
Apparently not every driver is as chatty as I am. The first day is always an icebreaker. I ask about their work and family backgrounds and share some of my own. By day two there’s an easy rapport. By day three, comfortable silences.
I seem to learn one thing from nearly all my helpers: their lives aren’t easy.
Many are young, just a few years out of high school, with messy family stories. Many are scraping by while trying to figure out what comes next. I’ve worked with people who’d spent years in prison and were trying to stay straight. Others had parents still incarcerated. One had aged out of the foster-care system. Some were leaving bad relationships and starting over.
Not all of them will make it at UPS long-term. But many are hustling, capable of more, and eager for better – much like I was when I first came to UPS.
Some seasonal drivers and helpers do come back as permanent hires after Peak. I wish there were more opportunities for those who want and deserve them. The lack of those opportunities is part of why there’s so much turnover.
I have a soft spot for driver-helpers. I don’t know exactly what they earn, but it isn’t much. They almost always want more hours than they get. They have little control over their schedules, little insight into how the system works, and almost no leverage when something goes wrong. If their pay or hours are messed up, they may not even realize it – and if they do, fixing it can be nearly impossible.
That puts them in a different class of worker than me. My job is full-time, permanent, and union-protected. I’m paid well, and I know how to navigate the system when problems arise.
But I still remember what it was like before.
Before my 30-day trial as a driver, I spent time as a helper myself. UPS had brought on so many new drivers they couldn’t get us all behind the wheel right away. Being a helper taught me the non-driving parts of the job and gave me one-on-one time with drivers who coached and mentored me. I always try to pay that forward – whether I have a helper for a day or a season.
Even after my trial, I’d driver-help occasionally when I ran out of DOT hours, or when drivers were injured or struggling to finish their routes after dark (cough Ray cough).
Driver-helpers are easy to overlook. They’re temporary and interchangeable by design. But they’re workers doing real, physical labor under precarious conditions. The least I can do – as someone who made it to the other side – is to see them, shine a light on them, and treat them with the care, respect, and patience they deserve.
