inside the super-sorter
Inside UPS’s routing terminal in Atlanta, a
scanning tunnel (left) confirms each package’s
destination; an elaborate system of “shoes”
(top right) then guides it to the right truck, with
human backup in the control room (above). The
average package spends just seven minutes in
the terminal before hitting the road.79
FORTUNE.COM // JANUARY 2020
box is passing its correct “off-ramp,” the exit chute
to a smaller belt that will take it to the appropriate
departing truck, they pop out and push the box down
that chute. The shove happens so fast, you can miss it
if you blink. The boxes seem to fly about by magic—
Harry Potter minus the wand. Soon the box is on a
new truck and off to a customer—wrapping up a ritual
that takes place hundreds of thousands of times a day.tHE ATLANTA FACILITY, which cost about
$400 million and employs some 3,000
locals across three shifts per day, is a far
cry from what Abney experienced when
he started at UPS back in 1974. His first
job involved memorizing zip code locations and
moving boxes around the old-fashioned, manual way
as a part-time loader at a sorting facility in Missis-
sippi. The SMART building’s system, he says, is 30%to 35% more efficient than the old way in terms of package
handling productivity, having replaced the need for human
sorters for all but the largest boxes.
Those factors make the super-sorter a crucial element
of Abney’s bold $20 billion, three-year transformation
plan —a bid to make sure 112-year-old UPS is around for
the next 112 years. The company has been the world’s
largest and most profitable commercial delivery service
for decades, but it faces ever-hotter competition to deliver
packages faster, cheaper, and more often—thanks in large
part to the unstoppable growth of e-commerce. FedEx
and DHL are also battling for package hauling supremacy.
Even the dowdy U.S. Postal Service is expanding its week-
end deliveries and horning in on the private companies’ turf.
And then there’s Amazon, which has already declared
that it plans to become a global power in shipping and logis-
tics. It’s currently UPS’s largest customer. Oppenheimer
analyst Scott Schneeberger estimates Amazon accounts forCO