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How UPS Trucks Saved Millions of Dollars By Eliminating Left Turns (ndtv.com)
Some people probably already know this, but for those who don't: UPS truck drivers don't take left turns, and despite this usually resulting in longer route, they are saving millions of dollars in fuel costs. From a report: The company decided on eliminating left turns (or right turns in left-hand driving countries such as India) wherever possible after it found that drivers have to sit idly in the trucks while waiting to take the left turn to pass through traffic. So, it created an algorithm that eliminated left turns from drivers' routes even if meant a longer journey. This meant that drivers do not have to wait in traffic to take a left turn and can take the right turn at junctions. Of course, the algorithm does not entirely eliminate left turns, but the number of left turns taken by UPS trucks is less than 10 percent of all turns made. Turns out that UPS was right -- the idea really paid off. In 2005, a year after it announced that it will minimize left turns, the company said that the total distance covered by its 96,000 trucks was reduced by 747,000km, and 190,000 litres of fuel had been saved. In 2011, Bob Stoffel, a UPS Senior Vice President, told Fortune that the company had reduced distance traveled by trucks by 20.4 million miles, and reduced CO2 emissions by 20,000 metric tons, by not taking left turns. A recent report by The Independent says that the total reduction in distance traveled by UPS trucks now stands at 45.8 million miles, and there are 1,100 fewer trucks in its fleet because of the algorithm. Even by conservative estimates, that's tens of millions of dollar of savings in fuel costs. Senior VP Bob Stoffel explained how it works on CNN a few years ago.
> Turns out that UPS was right
I see what you did there.
Eliminating left turns to save time at the expense of longer distance is plausible.
Making the journey shorter by eliminating left turns is not. So what is the article not telling us?
Glad to see this is paying off for them. This was covered here just over 9 years ago: https://slashdot.org/story/07/...
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
"Of course, the algorithm does not entirely eliminate left turns, but the number of left turns taken by UPS trucks is less than 10 percent of all turns made."
I don't think you know what "eliminating" means. Worthless "journalist".
A recycled story, but still fun.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The MythBusters did that one 7 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2010_season)#Left_Hand_Turn
Totally fucking brilliant. Well done, UPS. This is the kind of optimization that would make any computing professional proud.
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. - Bob Dylan "Subteranean Homesick Blue
We've not needed robots to eliminate jobs for a long time. Software has been doing it for a while now... but we still are blaming immigrants who are increasingly insignificant to the problem.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I assume each truck has a GPS tracker in it and the routes driven are downloaded and analyzed by UPS bean counters. Are there penalties imposed when a driver deviates from the no-left-turn policy too often?
breadth first search of a properly weighted graph.
If the entire route is based on right turns, perhaps it works out. On the other hand, even if not the entire route, the computer is probably better at route planning than the driver.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
it created an algorithm that eliminated left turns from drivers' routes even if [it] meant a longer journey.
a year after it announced that it will minimise left turns, the company said that the total distance covered by its 96,000 trucks was reduced by 747,000km
If eliminating left turns results in longer journeys, then something other than left turns reduced the total distance. Therefore, it's not clear from the data presented in the article that eliminating left turns was responsible for reducing fuel consumption.
"Of course, the algorithm does not entirely eliminate left turns, but the number of left turns taken by UPS trucks is less than 10 percent of all turns made."
I don't think you know what "eliminating" means. Worthless "journalist".
Let's say left turns were 40% of all turns and now they're 10%. You have indeed eliminated most left turns, just not all of them.
Bad on the headline for not qualifying "eliminating" but the rest of the article does.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
If this is true then it would make sense for Google maps and the others to offer routing options that also eliminate left turns.
I wonder what happens to traffic if everyone on the road eliminates left turns.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
You are an idiot. Even if they're went from N left turns to N-1 left turns, they'd still have eliminated a left turn.
Nowhere TFS says that *all* left turns were eliminated.
Worthless "journalist".
Worthless AC.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
The savings may seem insiginificant when compared to an operating cost of over $40 billion in 2016, but when distributed to a handful of executives, it's a nice chunk of money.
I wish this was a Google maps navigation option.
Although I kind of wonder if its only really beneficial for multi-stop routes where the entire route can be re-planned with right turns only and thus gaining some other efficiencies, versus a single-destination trip where avoiding a single left turn could involve a lot more distance.
For those readers outside the USA: In the USA, cars turning right can treat a red light like a stop sign, and turn right after stopping and checking the turn is safe.
Even by conservative estimates, that's tens of millions of dollar of savings in fuel costs.
How about liberal estimates, are they any different?
Would eliminating left-turning politics result in a similar saving nation wide?
Makes sense, left turns "cost" more than right ones is pretty common sense. Waze got on-board with this recently as well, with an option to "avoid difficult left turns". Before that, it would sometimes make the frustrating decision to send you on a route that has a left turn into 4 lane, no-light intersection because it was 1000 ft shorter. Of course, it's not perfect yet, but I've definitely seen an improvement.
In most EU countries and other places, it is prohibited in general to turn right on red, where one has to wait for the lights to turn green, or right green arrow, before one can make a right hand turn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Although when driving on the right, it is still faster to make a right turn then making a left turn, since one often has to wait for on coming traffic. I can't help but wonder if the time saving that UPS gets in reducing left turns in Europe is far less than in North America where turn right on red is allowed.
Derek couldn't turn left either.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
We don't allow right turn on a red light here. So they are still stuck waiting for traffic.
All they do is turn left.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
From nine years ago.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I would have thought that the first or second generation trip planning software would have weighted against left turns when it was written decades ago. It's pretty obvious change and would be simple to add to the algorithm.
Pretty sure you don't understand what 'eliminated' means.
> Turns out that UPS was right
I see what you did there.
Let's eliminate left turns from government policy as well.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This "news" was posted about ten years ago on ./, by CmdrTaco on in December 2007.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Seriously? You think eliminating 1000 trucks didn't cost some jobs?
So then why do they need to hire more people or raise wages when they SAVED MONEY? Somebody got a relatively small bonus and the shareholders gained. They already have IT who came up with this in the first place. No need to hire more. The big savings was not FUEL it was in fewer trucks and drivers which by comparison dwarfs the fuel costs. They wouldn't have much savings if they kept those idle employees.
Yeah, like robotic claws on garbage trucks didn't eliminate half the garbage men (which was a decent wage job.) I never saw my garbage costs go down either... maybe they stayed flat longer as a result.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I would assume the 747,000km reduction in distance traveled is due to them being able to eliminate the use of 1100 trucks from their fleet because each of the other trucks is more efficient time-wise and can cover a greater delivery area in a typical work day
Phoenix is a nice big grid with lots of normal "surface road" traffic, at least it was in the 90's when I lived there. I found there was so much traffic that turning left was more trouble than it was worth so I would make multiple rights around the block to get where I needed most of the time, it was faster.
Then I left for Houston - where if you see a road in one part of town and you see the road in another part of town in a straight line with the other place you saw it there's a pretty good chance it doesn't connect in the middle and and attempt at going around the block is likely to send you on a 10 mile journey of zigzagging roads in a neighborhoods with no marked way out.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
If you ignore the first article (Gadget 360) and click through the report hyperlink to
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
Then you find out that by cutting left turns they increase distance per package, but reduce time per package. By reducing time per package, they managed to put more packages on each truck. Miles per truck goes up, but the number of trucks goes down far more.
This reduction in total trucks also creates a slight reduction in distance traveled whenever two pickups are close to each other. So while miles per package goes up, total miles travelled drops tremendously.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Of course to get from point A to B, it takes more time when you eliminate left turns... But think that you actually have points A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H.. And Multiple trucks.. Meaning that maybe point B is not served by truck 1, even when it's two blocks away from its original route, but it's taken by truck 2 because it's better served by the no-left-turn algorithm..
That's what I call economies of scale.. And not the idiot thing of being able to push your providers tu give you better prices because you're a big buyer..
Left turns have a higher rate of severe accidents as well.
UPS also trains it's drivers to put their seatbelts on with their left hand. Why? Because they can start the engine with the right. Saves time.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"this USUALLY resulting in longer route"
Usually, AKA more often then not. So if the 'no left turn' aglo results in more often than not longer routes, how did they reduce total distance traveled by more than 747,000km?
I am sure that there must be something a bit more topical and tech oriented to be covered on /.
They did not specify which left turns they eliminated; they did not claim to have eliminated all of them. It's even stated in TFS "s. Of course, the algorithm does not entirely eliminate left turns, b"
The penny finally dropped.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Why isn't GPS software doing this? I use Waze frequently for my daily commutes but I often reject its suggestions for avoiding traffic because it wants me to make a left turn from some side street onto an extremely congested four lane road. The time it takes me to make just that one turn can be a few minutes, and it is significantly more dangerous.
Now we know why NASCAR cars burn gas so fast - it's all the left turns.
> Let's eliminate left turns from government policy as well.
Agreed.
They justsaid their tires are wearing out twice as much as they used to and blamed it on the worse road conditions. It seems that a bit of actual data should be delivered to back up the claims. Clearly if they are also reducing left turns which saves time, they not only drive farther, but from the time saved drive that much longer again. This by itself (may) add to more tire wear (also depending on how damaging turning is). Regardless, there seems to be more things happening and I question the data behind the "tires wearing twice as fast" statement. Too many factors over time would need to be understood. All this being said roads to seem worse but just not sure to what extent.
After I got nailed making a left shortly after getting my license, I started thinking about left-turns and how much more dangerous they are then right turns. There's so many more things to account for, and more chances for other people to make errors that force me to take hazardous countermeasures. A NYC study showed they are 3 times more dangerous then right hand turns. So now unless doing the right would take me way out of my way, I do that instead.
Remember, two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left :)
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
While this might be "optimal" from a static, pre-planned routing scenario, even greater time / fuel savings can be achieved by dynamically routing based on the immediate traffic. It's funny this concept has resurfaced, because after reading about this years ago I've thought about several times while driving. There is a better way, which I call "opportunistic left turns". If I know I must make a left turn, and I have 5 blocks to travel before that intersection, then I simply make the left turn at the first available opportunity. That gives me up to 5 chances to make a left turn when oncoming traffic or the state of the traffic light is best. Just think for a moment of a UPS truck driving around an entire extra block when they could have made a single left turn without any delay due to traffic allowing it at that moment in time.
Better known as 318230.
The algorithm didn't eliminate any right turns, but it did eliminate some left turns.
> You think eliminating 1000 trucks didn't cost some jobs?
> So then why do they need to hire more people or raise wages when they SAVED MONEY?
At first glance that seems rather counter-intuitive, doesn't it? There is a suprise waiting around the corner.
This has been studied over and over, so even the very fine details are well understood now, but pretty much all economists and most business majors. Here's a clear example that makes the big idea clear:
Suppose it cost UPS $20/pound to make deliveries, so they charge $30/pound. How many books would people have ever ordered from Amazon? Roughly zero, because who wants to pay $30 shipping for a book.
Suppose it costs UPS $1/pound, so they charge $1.50/pound. How many people order books from Amazon? A shitload. Giving Amazon the ability to expand into a million other products. How many people order stuff from Amazon now, with shipping costs low? A shitload. How many people are hired to deliver all the things people order from Amazon? A shitload.
The general idea is that when costs are reduced, more people buy it. When more people buy something, that creates more jobs in the industry.
In the early 1980s, mobile phones cost $3,995. Hundreds of people were employed in the mobile phone industry, selling hundreds of phones. Today you can get a mobile phone for $29, so millions of people get mobile phones, creating an industry with millions of jobs.
A man has the right to the left...
- this literally translates from Russian as: every man has the right to cheat...
You can't handle the truth.
When I worked at UPS all the driver's routes were built specifically to avoid left turns at all possible for all the above reasons. This is not a new concept, this is old UPS delivery tactics now brought to the forefront because of the use of tracking and analytics. It's a fluff piece for UPS that's all.
I bet if you talked to folks who worked there longer you'd find that they've all been doing this for the whole time they've been driving .
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
Slashdot reported this story already....In 2007. https://slashdot.org/story/07/...
UPS truck drivers don't take left turns, and despite this usually resulting in longer route,...after it found that drivers have to sit idly in the trucks while waiting to take the left turn to pass through traffic.... it created an algorithm that eliminated left turns from drivers' routes even if meant a longer journey.
Ah, I see, so they travel farther, but spend less time idling. Gotcha. Wait, wha...
the company said that the total distance covered by its 96,000 trucks was reduced by 747,000km, and 190,000 litres of fuel had been saved.
Soooo... are they traveling MORE miles or LESS miles?
Myth Busters did an episode on this. I think they agreed with the fact that turning right 3 times to go left saved time a little time.
Where I strongly disagreed with their test scenario was that they laid out a delivery route in a counter clockwise circle, so that the basic turn was always to the left. Then they compared a truck turning left with a truck turning 3 times right to go left.
This is not what UPS is doing (if I understand correctly). They have their computers come up with a delivery plan that is a circle going clockwise. This way the basic turn would be to the right. This would save more time than what Myth Busters tested.
From the article linked FROM the article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-ups-drivers-don-t-turn-left-and-you-probably-shouldn-t-either-a7541241.html
The efficiency of planning routes with its navigation software this way has even helped the firm cut the number of trucks it uses by 1,100, bringing down the company’s total distance travelled by 28.5m miles – despite the longer routes.
Jesus H. Christ, this is some of the oldest fucking news Slashdot has ever deigned to post. I've known about this for a decade - which is when it originally made mainstream news (I wasn't a /. lurker at that time).
their criminal customs brokerage fees at the Canadian border?
I think Google Maps should add this feature as an option.
That's why, if I ever competed in a NASCAR race I'd drive in the opposite direction.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I remember my great uncle cop telling me this in the 1980's.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I have emailed this thread and the original article to my wife. I feel vindicated!
The brown vehicles that show up outside your house to deliver your package are called Package Cars, not Package Trucks. The term Truck (specifically Feeder Truck) is restricted to the semis that move packages between sort facilities normally.
I am not sure why UPS is so adamant about the distinction, but if you work there and refer to it incorrectly you catch a lot of crap.
They might save more money if they had better fuel economy. Less than 4 km per litre is terrible - article mentions saving 197k L of fuel and 747k km distance.
It appears Clint got it right all those years ago.
"Right turn Clyde."
I'd pay money to see that!
I have seen a few courier trucks, not necessarily UPS, that are hybrid vehicles so no more gas engine idling. Are left turns even a concern now?
Their software not only has a preference for left turns, it seems to calculate that saving 1000 feet by directing you to a left onto a busy major road without benefit of a traffic light is quicker than driving those extra feet to an intersection with a traffic light, where you may wait for the light, but at least you're assured of getting in a left turn some time today.
You seem to be mixing up "left hand drive" and "left hand traffic". India is a right hand drive country . The only place I've been where drive and traffic side are regularly the same is Russia, especially Siberia, where they import a lot of cars from Japan, built to Japanese specs. It just adds to the crazy experience of driving in Russia!
I can only guess how much they could save by also eliminating right turns.
Damn this is old fucking news.
I watched the youtube interview linked above and the gentleman from UPS says that 20M miles was saved NOT just from left turns but their "package" technology. Whereas the summary provided above claims left turns to be the sole reason. What's with the lack of attention ?
Who knew that something that seemed so obvious to me for the longest time could have been monetized in some way. Anyone driving in any reasonably sized city should already have recognized that left turns are a time waster, and if they are a time waster for a car burning fuel their a fuel waster and that costs money. Of course for an individual its not likely all that much but as this demonstrates, for a 'fleet' of if properly applied by the driving world at large, it would likely to save BILLIONS. Of course once all the mapping software builds this in to their route suggestions everybody will be making mostly right hand turns, driving up congestion for those routes...so we better get started on building out infrastructure for right hand (or left hand depending on country) turning based advice...and then when EVERYONE else is doing that...I'll go back to taking left hand turns & beat all you suckers to where we're all going! :-)
UPS is going to be sad when NASCAR bans them from sponsoring any teams.
I'll concede, that there was complaining and there still is — from another direction. But the quantitative estimate needs citations — what makes you think, the amount hasn't changed?
For example, over 8 years Obama racked up about a score of verified death-threats. It may be too early to tell for Trump, but if Bush is any indication, he'll have so many, Secret Service will stop investigating...
Indeed, I can not recall anyone beaten up, or anything set on fire or otherwise destroyed during an anti-Obama protest...
It also stopped being racist — as I keep pointing out — without becoming sexist instead...
It having existed does not mean, there was just as much of it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The move to eliminate left turns was the result of a lawsuit filed by Derek Zoolander when he worked for UPS before he was a male model, alleging discrimination because he couldn't turn left.
UPS has not eliminated left turns, maybe most left turns but not all. Headline and story writer should follow a UPS truck for a day or so and they would see plenty of left turns. The no left turn is probably more prevalent in higher traffic areas, but when the traffic is less, the left turn makes more sense.
Passionately Indifferent
what if the delivery address is on a one way road where you can only turn left to ? :)
I wonder if all of their future Delivery Drones are going to go right also?
Mythbusters figured this out a long time ago.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do...
The funny thing is that during my 120 kilometer commute (or 240 up and down in total), I can only make right turns because every intersection I need to cross are roundabouts. It doesn't matter whether I have to go to the left, to the right or just straight ahead, for every direction I've to turn right to get to my destination. In the time of the old school traffic lights it was often frustrating to have to turn left (until 2011). Often you had wait 15-20 minutes before you finally had the chance to finally drive into the right direction. On my commute there were 4 left turns which took up to 1.5 hour of my daily commute (for only 500 meters of the 120 kilometer)
You have space to put basically the entire story in the summary (that's another issue), but not mention this is a success-story update to a much older story?
If they can save millions by removing just the left turn... imagine how much they can save by removing both the left turn... AND the right turn :p
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Keep in mind that this UPS policy saves all of us time and gas, since it mean's we're not getting stuck behind one of their vans turning left nearly as often.
That's 1100 fewer American jobs. Someone call Trump! Make America Turn Left Again!
> despite this usually resulting in longer route
> the total distance covered by its 96,000 trucks was reduced by 747,000km
What? How does this make any sense? I could definitely believe it caused a fuel savings, but not a *distance* savings. Surely an ideal algorithm wouldn't be as simple as merely "no left turns," and take traffic as well as distance, fuel consumption, etc. into account.
Thirty years ago the US Postal Service trained their carriers to prefer right turns. Not to save gasoline, but to avoid accidents. Three right turns turned out to be safer than one left turn according to the statistics they gathered. They also stressed the danger of getting into a situation that would necessitate backing up.
You'd think someone would have suggested that to UPS (and other fleet operators) long ago.
Today's trivia: Traffic jam- several vehicles need to cross a busy intersection; an ambulance, a police car, an army tank, a painted hippy Volkswagen, a Presidential vehicle, a Postal vehicle, a UPS truck, and a famous movie starlet in a pink convertible ... Who has the right-of-way? The Postal vehicle.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I wonder if they still do this in areas like New York City, where you cannot legally turn right on red, either?
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
A recent report by The Independent says ... there are 1,100 fewer trucks in its fleet because of the algorithm.
Hmmm. It seems that clever humans can eliminate jobs faster than robots and automation.
The savings don't just get distributed to a handful of executives in UPS. The execs are well paid but not that highly paid compared to the bankers and high profile execs you hear about all the time. The CEO's pay is probably less than $5 million/year but it's been 15 years since I worked for UPS. What the execs and other tech employees do get are stock distributions every year. I got about 1,400 shares in 10 years while I worked for them as a sys admin. I get over $3000/year in dividends from those shares. Those high level executives generally have hundreds of thousands or millions of shares so they're raking in the dividends but the profits get distributed equally on a share by share basis.
If there are no more left turn left on neither left nor right, then how many rights are left?
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
Works well where possible.
news my ass. fuck this cesspool
That would save a lot of gas, though the first tank might be a write-off
FedEx has been doing this for some time too. They developed an algorithm to optimize any route by avoiding left turns.
So why then, doesn't NASCAR only do right turns?
UPS drivers absolutely do make left turns. Who wrote this crap? Is it just the headline or does the story actually follow through on this falsehood?
tone
Individual trucks covered more miles, but better route planning saved time and allowed a single truck to cover more miles in a day, thus the number of aggregate miles was reduced.
https://xkcd.com/1205/
A few seconds add up quickly!