If I were to flip a coin between going to work as a service manager at a dealership or working as a delivery driver for UPS for the week, I’d simply start drinking. During the holiday season, UPS is slammed with packages that are being shipped here, there and everywhere…and they are slammed, I assure you. I hear about the fun from some of my wife’s family, who tell me tales from their workdays with the big brown vans. Between the holidays, online shopping and the prevalence of Black Friday deals, the work is out there if you want it. Shuttling packages around isn’t bad. But driving one of the trucks…yep, uninspiring at it’s best. From rollout until completion, it’s all day behind the wheel of a vehicle built explicitly for the sole purpose of hauling packages.
Back in the early 2000s, however, one UPS truck managed to become something more. Mostly as a way to stir interest in their NASCAR sponsorship, UPS approved of a build of one of the big brown boxes on wheels. Usually, once a truck comes out of service, it generally gets flattened to a pancake. But this 1990 P-800 23-footer got the luxury treatment in the form of a TRD-sourced engine, transmission, custom cage, suspension work, and much more to actually run around a racetrack competently. In other words, you’re seeing and hearing the real deal. No shock that Pikes Peak semi racer Mike Ryan was roped in to work on the project, making big work vehicles haul ass is his speciality.
Up until a day or two ago, this particular van was going to be auctioned off, but at the last second there was an issue: not one single ounce of paperwork. Ah well…guess the memories will have to do while the DMV gets to work on fixing that problem. Otherwise, that P-800 might end up squished too.
There was another UPS commercial where the package car (UPS speak for van) came in for tires. They were the old style stud pilot Budd wheels. The crew man has a 1 inch impact buzzing off the outer nuts that pile up on the ground. He pulls off the outside wheel and sees another 10 inner nuts holding on the inside tire…”Oh man…” Wish I could find that commercial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUmz0BnjxhU