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Think Brown!
Dec. 4th, 2007 03:58 pmUPS was the host today for our Rotary meeting today, giving us a tour of the Chicago Area Consolidation Hub. This is one of two large hubs (the other is the air hub in Louisville, KY) that handle most UPS packages.
The Chicago hub is a ground facility, with intermodal rail and truck yards, and moves on a typical day 1.3 million packages. They're coming up on the Christmas rush, where the busiest week will see just at 2 million packages a day.
The facility is huge, sprawling over 200+ acres and employing 7,200 people. It's conveyor belt heaven, with literally miles of belts. I was expecting to see a lot of urgent scurrying and carts of stuff moving back and forth, but it was actually quite calm, almost peaceful. I suspect that if it took frantic effort to handle the volume, the system would break down too frequently.
At any rate, we had an interesting tour, a nice lunch courtesy of UPS, and held our annual meeting to elect new officers. It was a very successful day. Now, Chicago is bracing for another winter storm, this one supposedly dumping 4 - 6 inches of snow.
Oh - that Italian coffin / chicks calendar I mentioned here? I emailed the link to my favorite undertaker, who's also in Rotary.
The Chicago hub is a ground facility, with intermodal rail and truck yards, and moves on a typical day 1.3 million packages. They're coming up on the Christmas rush, where the busiest week will see just at 2 million packages a day.
The facility is huge, sprawling over 200+ acres and employing 7,200 people. It's conveyor belt heaven, with literally miles of belts. I was expecting to see a lot of urgent scurrying and carts of stuff moving back and forth, but it was actually quite calm, almost peaceful. I suspect that if it took frantic effort to handle the volume, the system would break down too frequently.
At any rate, we had an interesting tour, a nice lunch courtesy of UPS, and held our annual meeting to elect new officers. It was a very successful day. Now, Chicago is bracing for another winter storm, this one supposedly dumping 4 - 6 inches of snow.
Oh - that Italian coffin / chicks calendar I mentioned here? I emailed the link to my favorite undertaker, who's also in Rotary.
