I know this posting is a bit old, but I have to comment on it. I don't know about other parts of the USA for UPS, but I used to work at the hub in Hodgkins Illinois, and they're just as bad at keeping damage to a minimum. I also worked for FedEx Ground in Hammond Indiana and saw a lot of the same stuff there too. Both places don't pay people good enough and expect people to work part-time, that people at both companies don't take enough pride in making sure packages don't get damaged. I used to see people use some packages as stepping stools at both facilities. Not only that, working at the UPS hub, if a package is small enough, it could easily be misloaded because supervisors are required to intentionally to place a package into a trailer just to see if someone will catch it. That's bad news if it's a hot load because trailers get slammed with packages, and people don't always catch those packages. I'm not lying about that because I've had my fair share of supervisor incompetence in intentionally tossing packages into hot loads & I didn't always catch that package. As for the higher cost of the shipping thru UPS; the cost is higher because they're union whereas FedEx is non-union. I just hope I don't get myself in trouble on this board for disclosing some of this stuff.