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American Morning
Busiest Shipping Week of Entire Year for UPS
Aired December 18, 2001 - 07:40 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Well if you're a procrastinator like most of us, you're probably still mailing out those last-minute packages with one week to go before Christmas - yes that's right, seven days to go to Christmas. This is the busiest shipping week of the entire year for UPS. Rusty Dornin is standing by live in the middle of all of this madness on the West Coast. Good morning Rusty.
RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Paula. It's known as peak week and this is peak day. It is the busiest delivery day of the year for the United Parcel Service. To give you an idea of what that means, 18 million packages will be delivered worldwide today and on an average day, it's about 13 million.
Company officials estimate that 10 percent of the U.S. gross national product in terms of goods is delivered today. Now if you sort of use United Parcel Service as a signpost of how the economy is doing, in other words, if things are starting to pick up, people are shipping more goods. There maybe some encouraging news.
Now joining us here today from the Hub in south San Francisco is Curtis White. Now Curtis, right after September 11th, I know that things dropped off for UPS as well as obviously many businesses in the country. What was the effect here?
CURTIS WHITE, UPS: We had about a two-percent drop in our volume and every week after September 11th, we're able to pick up volume.
DORNIN: Now how are things going in this holiday season?
WHITE: This holiday season is going very well for us. As you know, today is our peak day. Eighteen million packages a day - it's sort of like a Super Bowl atmosphere at UPS for us.
DORNIN: You're estimating it's actually over the numbers of last year - isn't that right?
WHITE: A little bit over the numbers of last year. We expect a little bit more this year through the Internet shipping and the surge of customers wanting to ship via the Internet opposed to maybe going into the malls. They're taking their packages to their families on airplane flights and things of that nature.
DORNIN: And even to - I mean initially do you think the company did benefit from the idea that they felt safer shipping UPS after the anthrax threat?
WHITE: Well safety within UPS is of the utmost concern to us, and our customers understand that with packages that ship through UPS, anonymity is not a factor. Our packages, customers understand they pull packages from our system. They know when packages are coming to them, so they are expecting them.
DORNIN: And here at the Hub in San Francisco, I understand even today you had a surge in the number of packages that are going to be delivered out of here.
WHITE: In the past 12 hours, we have processed over 250 million packages right here in this building.
DORNIN: Two hundred fifty thousand?
WHITE: Two hundred fifty thousand - I'm sorry.
DORNIN: Two hundred fifty million, now that's a number.
WHITE: Two hundred fifty thousand - a quarter of a million - yes.
DORNIN: Now what we see here are people - this is just when they're coming off the trucks - right? Explain what we're seeing here.
WHITE: What you're seeing here right now is the packages are being unloaded to the - from these vehicles here and we have sorters who sort the packages by color and they're based on the city. The cities are associated with color.
DORNIN: So by the time they come through this Hub and get out to the trucks, about how long does that take for the drivers to get them on the trucks and get them out and start to deliver them?
WHITE: Well the normal process, we run maybe about three or four hours. Today we'll run about five hours.
DORNIN: Great. Curtis White, thank you very much for joining us from UPS. And he does tell his folks that if you do want to get your packages delivered by Christmas, this is the week. I think it is today for the ground service and tomorrow for three-day air. So, you better get to UPS quickly - Paula.
ZAHN: You know it's interesting to see that happening at 5:00 in the morning. You can only imagine what that place is going to look like even later there today. Thanks so much for that live shot. Appreciate it.
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