Tag Archives: UPS

How UPS Saves Millions on Delivery Costs

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I remember writing about this a while ago, but can’t find it and now the issue has come up again.  United Parcel Service UPS saves millions of dollars a year on fuel costs by avoiding left hand turns and idling.  Here are the details.  

In 2007, UPS route planning technology, which minimizes left hand turns:

- shaved nearly 30 million miles off already streamlined delivery routes;
- saved 3 million gallons of gas; and
- reduced emissions by 32,000 metric tons of CO2 – the equivalent of removing 5,300 passenger cars off the road for an entire year.

    Perhaps newspapers can follow suit?  It won’t save the industry, but if physical distribution is part of their business model, they must implement these policies.

    What Is A Newspaper’s Greatest Asset?

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    I have been contemplating this a lot for the past couple of months now.  In light of all the changes in information delivery, what is a newspaper organization’s greatest asset?  What differentiates it from other forms of information delivery?  What does a newspaper do that Google can’t do?  That CNN can’t do?  That news aggregators can’t do? That the internet alone can’t do?

    Newspapers deliver a physical product to people’s homes and businesses.  And not only that, the product is invited into the home or office by the subscriber.  No one else can do this.

    The big problem for newspapers is that although they hold this monopoly, they haven’t evolved their product to serve their customers, hence the migration online – away from print.

    The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction Colorado has a unique spin on this conundrum.   Instead of innovating their newspaper, they decided to offer a delivery service to anyone in their newspaper distribution area.

    The Sentinel Express operates by using existing trucks and delivery logistics to deliver packages overnight.  The courier service is almost 3 times as cheap as using DHL, Fed Ex, or UPS.

    I like this kind of out-of-the-box thinking, however you are now moving further away from your core competency.   I wonder if that’s what parent company COX thought too, because they announced last week they are selling the newspaper.