Inc. (UPS) United Parcel Service - Early History, Early Information Technology Efforts, Move To The Internet

With sales of nearly $30 billion, profits of almost $3 billion, and roughly 360,000 employees, United Parcel Service (UPS) is the largest package shipper in the world. Since the early 1990s, the firm has spent roughly $1 billion per year on information technology. Considered the most technologically savvy of the world's largest shipping firms, UPS uses things like UPSnet, with more than 500,000 miles of communications lines, as well as a satellite that tracks hundreds of thousands of packages each day and connects roughly 1,300 UPS distribution plants in 46 different nations. In addition, the firm's expertise in logistics allows it do things like oversee the transport and delivery of 4.5 million vehicles to 6,000 North American automobile dealers each year; in 2000, the process cut delivery time by nearly one-quarter and reduced inventory, which saved Ford roughly $240 million. With a fleet of 152,000 delivery trucks, the firm handled about 70 percent of all U.S. ground shipping in 2001, as well 55 percent of e-commerce-related shipping worldwide.