UPS announced today an expansion of its package processing plant in San Antonio, Texas which will bring 150 more delivery vehicles to the facility along with 40 class 8 Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) vehicles.
A new on-site CNG fueling station will fuel the CNG tractor trailers, which are expected to displace roughly 25,000 gallons of diesel fuel each year.
Following the plant’s expansion, which is expected to take little over a year, UPS will have 340 delivery vehicles at the 40-acre facility site.
“UPS continuously invests in our integrated delivery network,” says Craig Wiltz, president of UPS’s Red River District. “Population and business growth throughout Texas are driving demand for our services and this facility expansion exemplifies one aspect of our ongoing approach to meeting that demand.”
The expanded ground sorting facility will be retrofitted with automated sorting systems and have twice the package processing capacity. The additional capacity is necessitated by area business growth and increasing customer needs in south Texas.
The building’s automated sorting systems are designed to move packages through the sort process capturing package data and routing volume to proper load positions. Six-sided decode tunnels will replace traditional scanning to capture package information from address labels.
Label applicators will place smart labels on packages for local delivery, providing UPS loaders faster instruction of proper loading. This enhancement is part of UPS’s suite of package flow technologies.
The expansion will add about 171,000 square feet, bringing the building’s footprint to more than 330,000 square feet. The building sits on more than 40 acres of land and serves UPS customers in Bexar, Comal, Guadalupe, Wilson, Medina and Kendall counties. The building’s team will continue to provide package pickup and delivery services during the project which is expected to be completed by mid-2017.