Seth Pacic works as a delivery driver for United Parcel Service in Dallas, Texas. In the summer, he has a second “full-time job”: keeping cool.
Every morning, Pacic packs his cooler with ice, water bottles and hydrating foods like cucumbers and grapes. He straps frozen ice packs to his wrists, hangs another around his neck and makes sure he always has powdered sports drinks and a battery-powered fan on hand.
In his free time, Pacic focuses his “entire diet” on hydration: He eats lots of electrolyte-rich yogurts, fruits and dark green vegetables and drinks 7.6 liters of water every day.
“I am seriously willing to try almost anything to alleviate heat problems,” he said.
Pacic, who is also a union representative, says these distances help him avoid heat exhaustion, but the oppressive summer temperatures still take their toll. Dizziness and lightheadedness are “normal”; nausea and difficulty concentrating are common.
“I’m sitting in the back of the van looking for a package. Then I forget where I am and have to get out to see what stop I’m at,” he said. “It happens to me every summer and to every driver, really.”
The company’s dark aluminum delivery trucks can amplify the heat from outside, and workers have been recorded experiencing temperatures in excess of 120°F (49°C) inside the vehicles.
The heat is not only uncomfortable, it’s dangerous. Drivers suffer heat stroke on the job every summer, and in some cases the accidents have been fatal. Pacic has seen these dangers in his own region: This month, a UPS driver was hospitalized after an accident suffering from heat exhaustion, union officials say. And last August, Chris Begley, a 28-year-old UPS driver, suffered a medical emergency while driving in 102-degree heat. He died four days later.
Faced with soaring temperatures last summer, 340,000 unionized UPS workers made heating a central issue in collective bargaining with their employer. They scored a major victory when the company agreed, as part of a new collective bargaining agreement, that each of the iconic chocolate brown package trucks it purchased after Jan. 1 would be equipped with air conditioning—part of a commitment to equip 28,000 package trucks with air conditioning by the end of the contract on July 31, 2028.
Today, however, the union says, UPS has made little progress toward that goal. CNN reported last month that the company has not purchased any new delivery trucks since Jan. 1, and as a result only a small portion of its delivery workers have access to refrigeration technology.
“The company is behind on air conditioning and that is unacceptable,” said Kara Deniz, a spokeswoman for the Teamsters union, which represents unionized UPS workers.
Jim Mayer, a UPS spokesman, declined to confirm whether the company has purchased new delivery trucks since Jan. 1. He said the company has “hundreds of air-conditioned vehicles on the road today.”
“We will continue to purchase and deploy new vehicles with air conditioning as quickly as possible,” he said in an email.
But employees interviewed by the Guardian said they had never seen air conditioning in one of UPS’s delivery trucks, only in other company vehicles, such as trailers and small Sprinter vans, which are too small to make all-day delivery runs. Mayer declined to provide further details.
John Cashion, a UPS mechanic in the Fort Worth area of Texas, said he believes UPS prepared in advance for the agreement to buy air-conditioned delivery trucks – by buying more vehicles before negotiations. By the end of 2022, the company had purchased dozens of new company vans, he said.
“I think … UPS knew what they were going to do and that’s why the contract language is what it is,” he said.
Mayer did not respond to comments but said UPS is “on schedule or ahead of schedule” in meeting all of its thermal contract obligations.
In last year’s union agreement, UPS also promised to provide drivers with 12-gallon water bottles and ice. Mayer said the company has provided drivers with more than 96,000 water containers and made sure all employees have access to cold water and ice.
The company has also committed to retrofitting existing delivery vans with fans, airflow-enhancing vents and exhaust heat shields. To date, the company has installed over 200,000 fans in parcel vans and equipped more than 74,000 delivery vans with vents and over 76,000 delivery vans with exhaust heat shields. The latter can reduce vehicle floor temperatures by -9°C, the company says.
Workers the Guardian spoke to say the technologies are ineffective to varying degrees – the fans are too weak, the heat shields too small. None of these other measures can replace air conditioning, they say.
“I think a lot of people read about the contract last summer and now think UPS drivers have air conditioning,” said Ben Reynolds, a delivery driver and union representative in Kansas City, Missouri. “But that’s just not the case.”
Asked about the complaints, Mayer said, “It’s clear you’ve spoken to a small group of dissatisfied employees who are not representative of the hundreds of thousands of UPS employees across the country.” In articles published on the company’s website, the company highlighted other employees who said their personal habits and the company’s support helped them survive the pressure.
“The company is doing its part; as drivers, we have to do our part,” said an employee with 20 years of driving experience in a post on the company’s website.
Mayer also noted that UPS has partnered with several companies to improve heat protection. For example, UPS has worked with Mission, a brand that specializes in cooling fabrics, to sell hats and other specialty clothing. UPS has also partnered with experts from the Gatorade Sports Science Institute and the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut “to study different working conditions and continue to improve our training so our employees can work safely.”
Doug Casa, CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute, said when the partnership officially began 18 months ago, UPS was already “very proactive with team safety strategies.”
He said he supports UPS’s adoption of air-conditioned vehicles, but said it’s “just a small piece of the puzzle” of heat protection, since many drivers spend so much time outside their vehicles during their shift. “These guys have to do other things to protect themselves,” he said, but added that UPS should always provide them with the appropriate materials.
But since the new brown vans with air conditioning are not available, workers are still suffering.
“Sometimes it feels like they don’t care about us at all,” Pacic said.
Prioritizing efficiency makes matters worse, say workers interviewed by the Guardian. They say managers encourage staff to move quickly and limit their breaks, even though studies show that extra rest breaks in extreme temperatures increase safety.
The company also monitors the trips of company vehicles and pushes workers to shave seconds off smaller stretches of travel. They are even reprimanded for taking the time to fill their water containers after starting work, Reynolds said. And in his building, workers work longer hours, making it harder to recover after long shifts in the heat, he added.
Reynolds said two drivers at his shop had to be hospitalized for heat-related illnesses this summer. In one case, the “unconscious” employee was found by a passerby who called an ambulance, he said. In both cases, management seemed more concerned with tracking lost-time injuries — an injury sustained on the job that results in time off work — than their well-being.
“I thought to myself, ‘Are you crazy?'” he said. “But that’s the corporate culture.”
When asked about the allegations, UPS said: “The safety of our employees is our top priority.”
“We require our drivers to work efficiently to serve customers, but we also make sure they take their breaks, especially in hot weather. And if an employee shows signs of heat-related illness, it is our policy to seek immediate medical attention,” Mayer said. “We are confident that our policies are followed by an overwhelming majority of our drivers and managers. And we take corrective action when we find a policy is not being followed.”
Mayer also disputed the characterization of the two heat-related illnesses. “In both cases, we learned that our management team responded quickly and neither driver was found unconscious by a passerby.”
As temperatures rise due to global warming, access to air conditioning is becoming increasingly important for delivery drivers. Summer temperatures across the country are getting colder; last month, the world experienced the hottest day in recorded history.
With no other safety measures in place, he and other stewards urged workers to move slowly and safely, Reynolds said.
“We deliver things to hospitals, but more often we talk about the crap I deliver that customers ordered from Amazon and people are dying because of it,” he said. “As a society, we should be long past the point where that’s acceptable. UPS’s only question should be: What do we do to make sure this never happens again?”
