UPS (NYSE:UPS) has completed its latest regional ground package sortation and distribution hub, further facilitating commerce between the Pacific Northwest and the world. The new facility also significantly increases the UPS delivery fleet serving the greater Seattle-Tacoma area, the largest metropolitan area in the northwestern United States. Adding 777,000 square feet of new automation-driven processing capacity to UPS’s global network, the hub has created more than 800 full- and part-time jobs.
“The new Tacoma regional hub is yet another key addition to the UPS global smart logistics network, allowing us to better serve the rapidly changing business and residential needs of our customers in the Pacific Northwest,” said Joe Braham, president of UPS’s Northwest District that covers six states. “UPS has a long history of being a partner in the economic growth of this region. Tacoma is a gateway to West Coast commerce as well as international trade lanes.”
With 40 percent of jobs in the State of Washington related to international trade, Seattle-Tacoma area businesses of every size and industry can benefit from UPS international trade services. Convenient access to UPS contract logistics distribution facilities, and multi-modal freight and customs brokerage services can be combined with innovative UPS technology solutions to simplify the international shipping process.
"The significant investment UPS has made in Tacoma is a vote of confidence in the current and long-term health of our local economy and further diversifies our economic base while elevating our vital role in international trade," said Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards. "I am pleased that this new hub will bring 800 full- and part-time jobs with excellent benefits to Tacoma, and I hope to see the majority of these filled by local residents. This new hub offers business and residential customers across the Pacific Northwest with a heightened level of access to the logistics and distribution infrastructure they need to adapt to the swiftly evolving demands of today's commercial and consumer landscape."
Covering an area the size of more than 13 football fields, the new Tacoma regional hub is powered by highly-automated technology that rapidly moves packages through the scanning and sorting process, capturing data to increase delivery accuracy and adding flexibility to respond to customer needs. High speed UPS Smart Label® applicators place labels on packages at a rate of three per second, providing UPS employees instructions for proper routing and loading into waiting trailers headed to destinations across the country, or into package delivery vehicles bound for Tacoma-area businesses and residents.
Innovative technology provides increased speed, efficiency and flexibility to move packages within UPS facilities as well as throughout the company’s smart global logistics network. Across North America, the company is implementing additional small autonomous guided tow tractors or “tugs” to move large or irregularly-shaped packages within its hubs that are not able to be moved on conveyor systems due to size, shape or weight. UPS’s proprietary Network Planning Tools (NPT) integrate UPS’s air and ground operations across the U.S. and around the globe. NPT enables UPS to reduce time-in-transit while efficiently managing spikes in shipping volume and severe weather.
UPS also recently opened a new package delivery facility in Hillsboro, Ore. to serve the rapidly growing business and residential demand in the surrounding Portland area. Both new package processing operations are part of UPS’s enterprise-wide transformation initiatives that will add more than 5.5 million square feet of new automated sortation globally ahead of the 2020 holiday season.
Founded in Seattle in 1907, UPS employs more than 12,200 people across Washington and Oregon in package delivery operations, air operations, ground freight, healthcare and life sciences logistics, freight forwarding and contract logistics services. Permanent UPS jobs – including part-time jobs -- come with great pay and benefits, including healthcare and retirement benefits. At many UPS locations, part-time employees are eligible to receive up to $25,000 in tuition assistance through the company’s Earn and Learn program. Interested jobseekers can begin the application process at , which has a fully mobile version of the job application site.
