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UPS to close daytime ground sort facility at Louisville hub

Reduced volumes cited as reason for closure

UPS to close daytime sort at Louisville ground hub (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

UPS Inc. said it will close its daytime package sorting operations at its Centennial ground hub in Louisville, Kentucky, on Feb. 16, citing reduced volumes.

In a statement, the Atlanta-based company (NYSE: UPS) said that “packages equal jobs, and we need to match capacity and the number of jobs with current package volume.” 

The statement did not mention how many employees might be affected by the impending closure. Nor did it disclose package volumes at the daytime sort or how much they’ve declined.

In a Facebook post published last week when the news began circulating in Louisville, Teamsters Local 89, the local representing UPS workers in the area, said it did not know how UPS plans to execute the closure. The local has scheduled meetings with UPS management to discuss the plan. Local media outlets first reported news of the impending closure.


The local said, however, that it doesn’t expect a massive impact on its membership because the Centennial day shift sort is a relatively small operation and that most or all of its volume, as well as affected employees, could be absorbed by the larger sort operations at the facility.

Louisville is also home to UPS’ primary air cargo hub known as Worldport.

Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.