How Technology Delivers For UPS

It's a frosty Tuesday morning in February, and Marc Freeman, a veteran driver in Atlanta for United Parcel Service Inc., checks his handheld device and discovers he's in for a busy day: more than 400 packages to deliver, a task that until recently would have left him still banging on customers' doors well after dark. But thanks to a custom-built software program UPS began rolling out two years ago, Freeman will easily finish his deliveries by 6 p.m., ensuring that his customers get their packages on time and that he makes it home for dinner.

Not so long ago, UPS drivers worked off maps, 3-x-5 note cards, and their own memory to figure out the best way to run their routes. That changed in 2005 when UPS began to implement a $600 million route optimization system--think MapQuest on steroids--that each evening maps out the next day's schedule for the majority of its 56,000 drivers. So sophisticated is the software that it designs each route to minimize the number of left turns, thus reducing the time and gas that drivers waste idling at stoplights.