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UPS Trucks May Soon Appear on Saturdays

February 24, 2017         By: Steven Anderson

For many people, the arrival of the big brown UPS truck in one’s driveway is a sign of great things to come: completed online purchases and the fun and necessary things these contain.

Now, UPS is planning to step up the likelihood of seeing those purchases a little sooner with Saturday ground delivery.

Starting this April, reports note, that big brown truck will appear in your driveway one more day a week, on Saturdays. Though some express and air deliveries already see UPS making deliveries that day, UPS is expanding the offering to include ground deliveries.

This will be a gradual process, sadly, and only about half of the United States will have access to Saturday deliveries even by the end of 2017. However, package pickup and sorting is also set to take place on Saturdays to help improve throughput and get back some extra network capacity at the start of the week.

The move comes at something of a bad time for UPS, however; despite huge growth in online shopping, the company has had to shell out big money just to keep up. Throw in reduced profits on those deliveries—backed up by a strong US dollar which isn’t helping overseas much—and profits were down despite revenues increasing. The company’s long-term sales prospects don’t look that great either.

This may be why UPS should be one of the biggest proponents of drone delivery out there. If it could get all its small deliveries off the big trucks that burn staggering amounts of fuel and require expensive repair to operate correctly, and instead put these in the care of electrically-driven flying drone systems, the savings would likely be astonishing, enough to take a lot of expenses out of the figures and let the increased revenue translate into increased profits to match.

Still, this is a development that’s likely one for the long-term department rather than any hope for immediate relief of UPS’ declining profit package even as it delivers all the things we bought with mobile payments. It’s good to know the company’s keeping up, though, and if it can hold out until drones become a thing, then its long-term prospects should perk up as well.