Delivering the story of leader in shipping
Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS
by Greg Niemann
Jossey-Bass, 256 pages, $24.95.
Driving Change: The UPS Approach to Business
by Mike Brewster and Fred Dalzell
Hyperion, 304 pages, $24.95.
If you ever wanted to learn more about UPS, the US package delivery company, then 2007 is the year to do it. In August, "Big Brown" celebrates 100 years in business, a milestone marked by two books -- one an inside story written by a former driver, the other a look at the business practices behind its success.
The insider's view comes from Greg Niemann, a loader, driver, and manager with United Parcel Service Inc. for almost 35 years.
Published last month , "Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS" is at times light hearted in its focus on the company's history and culture, its obsession with customer service, attention to detail, and what he calls the mystique of UPS drivers.
He notes that several UPS drivers, a majority of whom are male, married people they met on their routes.
Niemann also details a culture that indoctrinates employees with its corporate values and the cult of its founder, Jim Casey.
Casey started the company in Seattle in 1907 with $100. It has grown into the world's largest package delivery company with revenue of $47.5 billion in 2006 and some 100,000 drivers in the United States alone.
Casey's portrait hangs at UPS headquarters in Atlanta, not far from one of its earliest "package cars" -- as Niemann stresses, the company never refers to them as trucks.
UPS -- which at one time employed comedian Bernie Mac, CNN's Larry King, actor Kevin Costner, and presidential hopeful John Edwards -- prides itself on promoting from within, and members of middle management on up are expected to buy into its corporate culture body and soul.
While "Big Brown" reads in parts like an official corporate history , the company itself declined to comment on the book.
"Driving Change: The UPS Approach to Business," on the other hand, is an officially sanctioned work based on wide access to UPS officials and archives.
"We thought it was a very appropriate way to mark our 100th anniversary," UPS spokesman Norman Black said. The book comes out in June.
In "Driving Change," author Mike Brewster examines the challenges UPS has faced over the years, including that posed by its main rival, FedEx Corp., and that of becoming a global operator.
Laced with extensive quotes from founder Casey, "Driving Change" draws lessons for other businesses from the UPS experience, and each chapter ends with a management advice in the form of "UPS Rules for the Road."
