Reply #116: Not like FedEx

[Saving Hawaii]

I worked a good year for UPS as an unloader. Can safely say that I very rarely threw any packages. Air freight is a different story. All of that stuff gets thrown about 5 ft. At least at my facility we didn't really have much issue with throwing though. The unloaders can't. The sorters don't bother. The box liners throw packages a foot or two sometimes, but those were well-aimed and gentle shots. I haven't done much preloading but I'm guessing that the preloaders don't throw either (given the nature of that job). I realize that different facilities may have different equipment that makes throwing a little more common, but it was pretty dang rare in my facility.

The FedEx facility I worked at was something completely different. We weren't tossing packages a foot or two onto a belt, we were giving half of them baseball throws for 20 or 30 feet. I wish I'd realized how completely insane it was at the time and brought in a camera to document what we were being told to do. Serious throws for almost every package. The first 10' of a trailer we could get the belts to, but usually the first 10' was empty anyways. We were doing 'as far as you could' throws on almost every package. It was completely nuts.