UPS Back to Delivering by Bike

And when the delivery person goes inside a building to deliver their package. Thieves will promptly remove the remaining packages from the trailer.

That's a great idea. Portland doesn't seem like the best choice for this since it rains so much. Maybe LA?

I agree with the first two commenters... Seems if they could turn the cart into some kind of covered lock box, in order to protect the yet-to-be-delivered packages from theft and weather, this would be a fabulous idea. I still applaud UPS for taking the first step however!

Very cool. They could even utilize electric bicycles to get even more deliveries done per day per person. Seems like a step backwards when compared to regular bikes, but if those extra deliveries mean less of those big brown trucks, then that'd a great trade off.

I'd love it if my area had delivery jobs like that, I'd snag one in a second.

First, that's probably the delivery person's personal bike, not UPS's. I don't think UPS supplied anything but the trailer and packages. As for the theft issue, I think thieves would just take all of it (bike, trailer, packages, and all).

Your friend the FedEx driver couldn't have been getting $300 in tickets per day or he wouldn't have a license. Besides, I see FedEx and UPS (et al) trucks parked every which way all the time. They pull right up to the front door of the grocery store here in town, for instance, and block the whole entrance to carry in 2 or 3 boxes.

I used to be a truck driver. These people FedEx hires to drive their small delivery trucks are NUTS. They drive like maniacs pretty much nation wide. If he was getting $300 in tickets, he probably deserved it.

I'd also like to know how UPS is saving money with these bikes if they're having to hire 3 more employees to cover the same route 1 would do in a single truck. I mean, I know you guys love bicycles and all, but this is kind of dubious. I think UPS is just trying to make brown look green.

@Aaron:

I'm fairly certain that the "$300 in traffic tickets" refers to parking tickets due to parking in no stopping zones / bus stops / too close to intersections / etc. At least around here all they can do is cost money - it's not a moving violation so it doesn't go against your driving record.

They're saving money because they're running bikes during peak season as opposed to trucks that aren't in use 10 months out of the year.

Paying the people pales in comparison to 10 extra months of insurance, minor upkeep and depreciation.

What shocks me is that they're getting people to do it on bikes and not just using their passenger car.

the trailers have a rain cover for sitations where it is required, and the service is also in California and Washington. The bikes come from UPS. See the release:
http://bikeportland.org/2008/11/14/ups-gears-up-for-holidays-with-bike-delivery/

Moving violations and "parking ticket" are two different things, and it would be pretty easy to rack up big bucks with very few parking tickets.

There are some densely packed cities where the lack of parking makes this make sense from the parking standpoint alone.

A tool box made for pickups would both have locking capabilities, and be weatherproof. Cheap and easy to add to a flatbed or box style trailer.

Seconded on the ebike comment - not only would they be more efficient per cyclist in terms of number of deliveries possible, but the total energy cost is less when using renewable energy to recharge the bike's battery compared to the energy cost for the cyclist's extra food requirements - especially when doing heavy loads like this. The covered lock box/cage with roof idea would also be critical for this to be a secure delivery method. I can see tricked out electric delivery bikes with covered cargo trailers becoming widespread. Sweet, and well done UPS for the initiative!

I am partner in a 'bicycle only' delivery service in NYC.

We have a lockbox attatched to a worksman trike, check it at cyclehawknyc.com

UPS, let's talk!!

Won't they take owner-operator bikes? This would be a great way to pay off a Sun or Rhodes. I know that a Sun will tow over 500 pounds and a Rhodes can be weatherproofed.

The concern about security of the parcels during the time the delivery person is away making a delivery is misplaced. I have a bike trailer like this (bought from Dahon over 15 years ago).

The trailer also serves as a pedestrian "trailer" with the "tongue" over the rear fender serving as a handle. So the solution is that the operator just detached the trailer and pulls it along. The only downside is having to use elevators, rather than stairs (although I have pulled it up and down stairs at times).

Chris Bradshaw, Ottawa

Hmmm. The bike and trailer shown in the illustration are the same as those purchased by UPS for the work in the Portland area. The Bullwinkle gloves may've been the rider's personal gear - I rode with my own bike clothes and gloves.

The advantage to the bike usage for UPS is seen in high density delivery areas like apartment complexes and clusters of shops or light industrial districts, where the brown truck drivers would have to negotiate tedious short-intervaled stops. Stop, go up stairway, come down stairway, prepare for next stop, drive thirty meters, repeat. Bicycle operations relieve those drivers during the busiest time of their year in December. Bikers are classified as "Helpers," attached to a particular route driver; they are not paid nearly as much, so there's some savings for the company there.

In actual practice, the security issue with the packages in the trailer is minimal (yes, a determined evildoer could toss the whole bike/trailer set into a pick-up truck and scoot), since in most cases the bike is left only a short distance from where the delivery is signed for or dropped, and the packages could be covered by that tarp for out-of-sight-out-of-mindness. Some locations would obviously have more opportunistic passers-by and a more secure actual cargo bike solution would be preferable.

In the few weeks I rode for them on the department-store mountain bike pulling that weakly converted garden cart, people gave a very positive response to having their stuff delivered by bike. The UPS drivers dug the program. Don't know what Management thought. I had fun - especially in the snow - but Dispatch chose to shut down the bikes in my area after a few days of that (I got all my stops made, but even the trucks were returning thousands of undelivered packages).

Yeah, bakfietsen or cargo bikes from any good maker would have been better, but for an experiment, it worked. The packages were dropped at a secure site and we riders would just fill up the trailer and make stops within a short radius of the site, returning for the next batch when empty. Not sure that the expense of electrification would be justified considering the short range to the surrounding stops served by each drop site (the route, if you will). If ya couldn't pedal those short distances and inclines then pretty much you were not matched to the right work.

UPS has been using bikes for years, hopefully this is a serious look at increasing their use on a wider basis. A clear example of where being "green" yields tangible benefits and savings all around.