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What Can Brown Do for You?
UPS Fitness Training Program
By Anna Smith
Forget the groundhog and the first daffodil -- if The Onion
is to be believed, a United Parcel Service man in
his classic mud-brown shorts is the first sign of spring.
There may be some truth behind that. UPS deliverymen
-- and over ninety percent of the company's drivers are men --
are more than just brawny package-delivering machines. The
UPS deliveryman has transformed into a sex symbol, and a
powerful representation in American culture of good fitness
and raw industrial power.
The New York Times has called the UPS deliveryman an "industrial athlete," and a workers' daily load hammers that
point home. The average deliveryman walks over four and a
half miles each day, delivering oversized packages to eagerly
expectant men and women, and he lifts and carries thousands
of pounds during the course of an average shift. The average
American barely matches this amount of exercise in an entire
week, so it's no wonder that UPS deliverymen, at least anecdotally,
have avoided the obesity, high rates of diabetes, and
heart disease that plague the rest of the country.
While the UPS hasn't released private information on the
health of its workers, Emil Johnson, director of Strength
and Conditioning at Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium, isn't
surprised at these workers' fitness and iron-piston stamina.
"They're in good health," he said of the stallions clad in
brown, "and getting plenty of exercise."
UPS has encouraged its workers to get that exercise since
the very start. Until the company bought its first Model T
in the early 1920s, its fleet ran deliveries entirely by foot and
bicycle. The company believes in hands-on service: to encourage
face-to-face interaction, corporate policy stipulates that
deliverymen must walk the last few steps to a customer's door.
But the UPS has its own Kama Sutra, its corporate Pillow
Book -- over the past two decades, the company has compiled
its collected wisdom into a corpus of fitness and safety advice
comprising a formidable set of guidelines known as the 340
Methods. "I don't know where that number 340 came from,"
said the dreamy Dan McMackin, a UPS spokesman. "There
are over six hundred methods to keep you safe and make you
efficient in your daily routine."
The 340 Methods is based on industrial time studies, and
details with meticulous obsession the safest and most efficient
way to sit down, turn a key, walk down the street, and far, far
more. It?s a way of ensuring that this dream fleet of industrial
studs delivers the best possible service -- and each driver is supposed
to cradle the slim manual in the glove compartment of
his chocolate-brown ride.
Continued
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