UPS, the mammoth delivery company, tackles it with hundreds of cargo jets, thousands of big rigs, tens of thousands of those familiar brown delivery vans — and Justin Hurst's bike.
Hurst is one of about two dozen UPS workers who are pedaling up to homes in Silicon Valley this holiday season pulling trailers. Think of them as the special forces in UPS's holiday battle to get what you want from there to here.
"People are like really happy to see us bike around," says Hurst, 22, who rides a route in Palo Alto. "They like to see us not using cars."
[UPS spokeswoman Rhoda] Daclison-Dickey says that in years past the company would rent additional trucks to handle the crush of the peak delivery season.
"It was no longer cost-effective to rent these big Budget trucks to deliver packages," she says. "We had to figure out alternative ways to get people's packages to them within the time frame we committed to."
And so, the regional office bought a fleet of bicycles with trailers ($700 per set) to replace the rentals in San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Fremont.
Read more at the Mercury-News: UPS's two-wheeled delivery secret.
Has anybody seen these UPS delivery bikes? Any photos?
Last week the UPS guy noticed my bike in my office at the bank, and commented on it. I asked him if they were still using bikes for delivery during the holidays, and he said not in Tulsa. He said they tried in downtown, but it didn't work. He didn't know why. Too bad, I think it is a great idea, and I would do it in a heartbeat.
ReplyDelete