Extra hiring for holiday season deliveries backfires on UPS

Dallas

AFTER missing millions of deliveries on Christmas in 2013, United Parcel Service Inc (UPS) promised that it would do better next time. It hired thousands more workers to ensure that it could handle a deluge of shipments on its busiest days.

The improvements worked - maybe too well. While they nailed on-time deliveries during the 2014 Christmas season, many workers and trucks were left idle on less busy days. The drop in productivity and the extra expenses for training and overtime dragged down UPS's 2014 preliminary earnings well below forecasts, the company said last Friday, sending its stock down the most in more than eight years.