December 7, 2009: Have you heard managers claiming the company is losing money?
Fill them in on the facts.
UPS recently announced after-tax profits of $549 million for the third quarter of 2009 (July-Sept), up from $445 million in the second quarter. In a terrible economy, UPS has still hauled in $1.4 billion in after-tax profits in the first three quarters of the year alone.
UPS’s profits are down from last year when the company’s third quarter profits were $970 million. But UPS is still making big money—and still beating the competition. FedEx made just $181 million in the last quarter—and lost $779 million in the six months before that.
Total package volume is down 3.6 percent—a drop, but not enough to justify the number of laid-off drivers, combined routes and excessive overtime. And things are looking up. UPS expects to ship about 400 million packages world-wide between Thanksgiving and Christmas, up slightly from 2008.
UPS forecast 22 million shipments on what it expects to be its peak day, Dec. 21—equal to its peak day in 2007, when the company was making record profits.
The UPS Teamsters who bust our backs to make these profits deserve a little more respect and a lot more contract enforcement.
In a terrible economy, UPS has still hauled in $1.4 billion in profits.