David's Blog

UPS and the Lottery Truck

I've been sorting for a few months now, and I pretty much have the hang of the job. The supervisors and management are leaving me alone about the petty things, and the other day I was even congratulated because I was really close to hitting this big arbitrary benchmark number for speed for the whole night. That was kind of cool, because I hadn't really thought of myself as a fast sorter.

The reason I did so well that night is partly due to the fact that I was sorting the lottery truck. This isn't a name that we call the truck at work or anything. It's just how I think of it. See... I ask a ton of questions to pretty much anyone who answers. I also read the return address labels of a good number of packages -- if they come in a big group.

Well, the lottery truck has recently caught my interest, because I noticed that when the truck pulls up to the bay and is opened the supervisors will have two pairs of guys go to the truck and unload and sort it. It doesn't matter what those guys were doing beforehand. Everything gets dropped to go and sort this truck. No other truck seems to get the priority that this truck has, and I had never had the "priveledge" of sorting the truck until recently. (Though I obviously had loaded many of the boxes that come out of it when I was a loader.) So, all those things culminated in catching my attention.

I looked at the box. I looked at the return address. I asked questions. Now I know that these little 15-25 pound boxes and the 50-60lb bags that go with them are full of Florida Lottery tickets.

This past week this has been my favorite truck to sort too. I wear gloves to work to keep my hands from getting messed up, and that really has its advantages from time to time. With this truck, there are a couple hundred of these mesh bags that are really heavy, have somewhat sharp ends, and don't feel good to touch or grab at all. So most people who sort them go a little slower when handling the bags. I've got the gloves though so I just toss them up on the belts without a problem. Also, the little boxes are just narrow enough so that I can palm them. So, with those I am looking at all the bozes at once, using both my hands and just flying through the flow of packages.

The supervisor noticed that I went fast and kind of enjoyed doing this truck so now I am always one of the guys to do it. I never get blown out on this truck, and sometimes I can even sort two unloaders by myself. I like knowing that I am sorting two people's flow at once. That really kinda makes me feel cool. Also, I go so fast when I do this truck that the supervisors have been looking the other way when I throw the boxes, because what I do is palm a box in either hand, pick it up, and then throw it up onto a belt. You're not supposed to throw or even toss any packages, but these are lottery tickets. They are packaged like bricks and no one has ever seen one pop open before. At the end of the night I like knowing that I am essentially handling all of the lottery tickets sold in Florida and parts of South Georgia in one night.

So, yeah, that is a fun thought.

Other things that were neat to realize... the place where all these tickets is just up the road from UPS Orlando HUB; Every week the Florida lottory goes through 3-4 full semi trailers of lottery tickets.

Man, this makes me wish I really knew the exact weight of these ticket boxes, because then I could better estimate how many tons I am handling each hour that I do these trucks. For some trucks we've been able to estimate that we do from 6 to 10 tons in an hour.

Posted by David at October 12, 2005 03:36 PM