34 Years....

Today is my Dad's last day at work. He is retiring. After many years of going back and forth on when to actually retire - today is the day. We have been counting down the days since May. It is hard to believe that it is finally here. We all agree that working through another Christmas season was not an option for my Dad - as the days are really long, and the weather totally sucks. The Christmas season really takes a toll on all of the drivers. So the week before the "official" Christmas season begins at UPS - my Dad has retired.

Here are a few amazing accomplishments that my Dad has during his time at UPS:

1. Worked at UPS for 34 Years - How many people out there can say that they are still at the same job after 34 years? Not many. My Dad started at UPS this time of year, 34 years ago, as a Christmas hire. After the Christmas season was over, they kept him on as a temporary driver to fill in for everyone who was out sick. Apparently they had quite the flu epidemic that year. After that, the rest is history. He has been working at UPS ever since.

2. Achieved 34 years of safe driving. Meaning - he has never had an accident charged to his record while driving a UPS vehicle. There have been instances where he has been hit by other people - but he has never caused an accident. To me, this is a huge accomplishment. He drives more miles every week then most of us drive in a month in the UPS truck alone. This does not include the 80 mile round trip to work and back home everyday.

3. In 34 years he missed work 1 time due to an injury at work. He stepped out of his truck and into a giant hole. Rolled his ankle, and was out of work for 2 weeks.

4. Has an excellent customer service record. They went back through the records and no one could remember a complaint about his service. He has even gone so far as to take his personal time, and drive in his own vehicle to pick up a package that was accidently left behind and get it back to the building so it could make its shipment times. That is dedication.

5. Has produced a 1" 3-ring binder of almost every phone number and address of the people on his route. In addition to the phone numbers and addresses - he has hand drawn maps (before the days of mapquest and google maps were so popular) of how to get to the houses, all of the quirks in his route. This will be passed onto the next driver.

To give you an idea of what 34 years of driving equates to, I did some simple calculations.

My Dad worked 8,874 days at UPS.

He drove approximately 330 miles a day. This is from the time he left the house until he returned home that night.

That is a total of 2,928,420 miles over 34 years.

How far is that you may ask? Well...

He drove around the world at the equator 117.6 times

He drove to the moon and back 6.1 times

If you think that on average he would drive 50 mph - he spent 6.7 years constantly driving.

Congratulations Dad! I love you very much. I hope that you enjoy your retirement and that it brings you everything you could ask for. You deserve it! We are so happy for you!