back to the bike
UPS: STAND AND DELIVER
senior leadership team. His first
major outside hire: Scott Price,
who joined UPS from Walmart
two years ago as its first ever
“chief strategy and transforma-
tion officer.” Price has become
the point person on overhauling
UPS’s processes and structure. He
had a similar role at the world’s
largest retailer, where his title was
executive vice president of global
leverage, but he also knows the
shipping world, having previously
run DHL’s Asia-Pacific unit.
Price’s initial brief from Abney
was to find places where UPS
could save money, so that it could
invest more behind a few big
bets. The bets Abney wanted to
make were on home delivery for
e-commerce, specialized health
care deliveries, helping small
and midsize businesses compete
online, and expanding in the
fastest-growing overseas markets.
None of the bets were cheap,
as Abney’s $20 billion price tag
made clear, but they have already
been impactful.
One way to think about the
evolution of UPS’s business, Price
explains, is to consider the basic
unit of shipping that the company
can keep track of in transit. For
decades, the company focused on
tracking industry-standard, semi-
truck-size containers filled with
goods. As logistics operations got
more computerized, UPS could
track smaller pallets of goods.
Now, with scanning systems in
place throughout the system like
those in the Atlanta super-sorter,
the unit of shipping is what Price
TOURISTS around the
Pike Place Market in
Seattle might be get-
ting a sense of 20th-
century déjà vu.
That’s because UPS,
which got its start
in that city in 1907
delivering letters and
parcels by bicycle, is
back in town deliver-
ing by pedal power
again. UPS’s new bike
has three wheels, a
large cargo compart-
ment in the rear, and
an electric motor to
assist the UPSer mak-
ing the deliveries.
It’s all part of a
global trial, now in
30 cities. UPS hopes
the bikes will reduce
pollution and improve
service in dense urban
areas, while avoiding
the traffic and (in-
creasingly common)
vehicle prohibitions
that would slow UPS’s
standard brown vans.
In some cities, UPS
drives a big trailer as
close as possible to
overcrowded zones
and then finishes the
deliveries by foot or
e-bike.
UPS transforma-
tion chief Scott Price
got to pedal one of the
e-bikes on a recent
trip to London, but he
didn’t make any actual
deliveries. “I wasn’t
allowed on the street”
by the company, he
recalls. “I wasn’t in my
Browns.”
COURTESY OF UPS
OUTFOX
THE
WOLVES
OF
WALL
STREET.
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