Watch Now


UPS, Teamsters take break after SurePost agreement

More parcels to be redirected to UPS

SurePost tentative deal will redirect more parcels to UPS from Postal Service (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

UPS Inc. and the Teamsters union will resume national bargaining June 5 as both sides spend the week negotiating the final two supplemental agreements covering workers in Louisville, Kentucky, and Northern California.

The hiatus comes as both sides reached a tentative agreement to reduce the size of UPS SurePost packages eligible for handoff to the U.S. Postal Service, according to a report in Supply Chain Dive confirmed by a Teamsters spokesperson. The agreement, which must be ratified by the Teamsters rank and file, will increasingly redirect more SurePost packages to regular package car drivers over the life of the contract, the spokesperson said. No details were provided.

In an email to FreightWaves, Kara Deniz said that “we’ve reached (a) tentative agreement … to reduce the overall size of packages eligible for SurePost delivery — so more existing volume is going back onto Teamster trucks rather than coming off.”

Under terms of the current contract, a package handled by the Postal Service must meet certain weight and cubic criteria to move as SurePost. If they are exceeded, the package is eligible to be redirected into the UPS system for delivery by a union driver.


In a communique last week, the union said it had spent hours “repeatedly pushing back on attempts to weaken worker protections around the SurePost program.” Several rounds of proposals were exchanged to push UPS to agree to put more boxes on union package cars, the Teamsters said.

Under SurePost, lightweight packages bound for residences are inducted deep into the postal system for final-mile delivery by letter carriers. The Teamsters have long pushed to get rid of SurePost because it siphons delivery business from its members.

2 Comments

  1. RPSman

    Glad to hear. USPS vehicles are designed for very small packages and letters, moving more packages to Brown package cars will increase stop density and provide more Teamster jobs.

Comments are closed.

Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.