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UPS Drivers Using Bikes to Deliver Packages This Christmas. I Seen it Wit Me
Own Two Eyes.
Written by Nick Chambers
Published on December 11th, 2008
9 Comments
Posted in Emissions, Environment
9
votesBuzz up!
So I came home from work today and saw a woman riding a bike loaded to the
gills with cardboard boxes on a heavy duty bike trailer. At first I thought it
was just another one of the local crazies that rides their bikes from one side
of the town to the other all day long, but I'd never seen her before, and if
you've lived in my town for as many years as I have, you get to know who our
crazies are.
I watched her ride her bike around my neighborhood (it's a small neighborhood)
with a bit of a detached interest as I unloaded things from my car. She stopped
every now and then, picked a package out of her clown-car-stuffed trailer and
dropped it off at various neighbors' doors.
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My first thought was that somebody had started a bike delivery service. I
actually had had this thought at one point, but then decided there wouldn't be
much money in it. After a while, my curiosity got the better of me, so I went
to investigate.
Turns out, the woman is a UPS driver — a UPS driver at the bottom the totem
pole to be more exact. And she was very nice. Apparently, UPS had some bean
counters crunch numbers and find out that by replacing a certain number of
trucks with bikes in the more temperate winter climates, they could save a
boatload of money over the holiday season. In the case of my local UPS
district, $36,000 to be exact.
I never got her name, but she said that she only knew for sure that UPS was
conducting the program in Oregon, California and Washington. She didn't seem
like she was happy about kind of being forced to do it because of her status as
a noob driver, but she said it really wasn't that bad except for when she had
to ride in the hilly parts of town.
She said that she hasn't had to deal with any rain yet, but that she was
worried that when the rain does start it might get pretty ugly for her —
although it certainly looks like they've outfitted her to deal with bad weather.
I mean, look at that bike, it's decked out. Check out the camo handwarmers. I'm
not sure why they gave her a mountain bike though, it's not like she's going
off-roading. A commuter bike with some smooth tires and a more comfortable
sitting position would have been a much better choice. Methinks they didn't
actually consult with any real cyclists.
You know though… I'm having trouble doing the math. I mean, yeah they can save
on fuel by not using the trucks, and certainly it helps cut down on emissions
(yay environment!), but using my all-knowing powers of guesstimation, you'd
have to make like 10 bike trips to carry the same amount of crap that one of
their trucks can. That doesn't really matter, I guess, if you're not worried
about volume or time, but it seems that a company like UPS is inherently
worried about both of those things.
Anyway, I'm not the bean counter with the UPS statistics, so don't hold me to
that analysis. And if UPS is convinced they can save money and help the
environment at the same time, so am I!
Admittedly, I'm a little late to this story as UPS announced the program a
month or so ago. But it was completely new news to me, and I'm guessing most of
you didn't know about it yet either.
One other perk the UPS bike driver commented on: she has a lot more
conversations like the one she had with me today. In that sense, I guess you
could say it's a bit of a community builder too. Imagine if we all had reasons
like that to talk with the service people who come and go throughout our busy
days.
We might actually start treating each other like human beings.
Photo Credit: The author's own handiwork. Note that the photo was altered to
provide some amount of anonymity to the UPS bike driver. I did ask her if I
could take it beforehand.
Tags: bicycle, bike trailer, bikes, cyclist, Delivery, delivery person,
Environment, fuel, gas, Holiday, Package, save money, united parcel service, ups
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