Key facts

Employment

• The Worldport Freight Facility (WFF) employs approximately 1,0o0 employees.
• Major job types include:
• • Forklift drivers (move cargo around WFF)
  • Sweepers (forklift helper on ground)
  • Shifters (move containers between stations)
  • Tug drivers (move cargo from ramp to WFF)
  • Small freight sorters and freight handlers
  • Office and floor administrative employees
  • Full and part time management
• Part-time Next Day Air sort employees are eligible for Metropolitan College.
• 80 percent of the hourly employees and management work the Next Day Air sort.

Technology

The E2K system is the back-office brains behind the brawn of the UPS air freight operation. E2K offers an array of functions, from automating customer service data to generating delivery reports. It also calculates rates, determines routes for moving freight and books shipments. Smart labels are one of E2K's most important features. The system generates labels with destination airport codes, service levels, number of pieces and shipment weight.

E2K tracks the movement of freight from origin to destination and feeds that information to UPS Supply Chain Solutions shipment visibility tools, Flex¿ Global View (FGV) and MyFreight. MyFreight and FGV are web-based tools that customers can use to track freight shipments.

How it works

Heavy air freight shipments will be offloaded from UPS aircraft. From the ramp, the cargo, loaded in containers, on pallets, or on a similar unit load device (ULD), is taken via tug and dolly to WFF, located just south of the west runway at Louisville International Airport.

Once at the freight building, inbound containers or pallets are staged in a check-in yard outside the facility for processing. Once a ULD is assigned a mod to be unloaded, a tug takes it to one of the 17 "mod aprons" on the outside of the building. A mod apron works as a caster deck front porch to WFF's large cargo doors.

From the mod apron, each container or pallet is pushed inside the building to a work area, or mod. Any small or conveyable volume is unloaded from each ULD and sorted to its outbound destination. The conveyable sort can process 10,000 pieces per hour using a manual five-way process that can transit in 12 minutes the building's 103 conveyor belts, uniquely hung from the roof.

The inbound ULDs are then pushed to one of the six unload stations on each mod. The freight is unloaded and transported via forklift to a staging area near the end of the mod towards the center of the building. Another forklift will take the shipment via "main street," a forklift travel path through the middle of the building, to a staging position at that shipment's destination mod. From there, at one of each mod's 10 heavy freight load positions, it will go into an outbound ULD. There are three conveyable freight load positions available on each mod for conveyable freight volume.

When appropriate, the ULD loaded with heavyweight freight is then topped off with small volume and taken to a nearby scale to be weighed. From there, the freight-laden ULD is pushed back out onto the mod apron, transferred to a dolly and tugged to an outbound staging yard. When it is time for the container/pallet to go to the aircraft for loading, a tug pulls it to the outbound aircraft where it is loaded and flown to its final destination.

Interesting facts

• A certified freight station, the WFF processes more than just freight. The facility is multi-product, handling air cargo and volume for the U.S. Postal Service
• Space equivalents: 653,000 square feet = 15 football fields; 8.2 soccer fields
• Capacity of 1.6 million pounds per hour
• 300 forklifts will operate in the building.
• In addition to the air freight operation, the WFF contains 60,000 square feet of office space.
• The WFF measures 15 acres under roof. The entire site is 44 acres.
• The WFF has 75 truck doors to accommodate truck trailers.
• 103 conveyor belts hang from the ceiling of the building to allow for forklift traffic.
• 3,500 tons of steel were used to construct the WFF.
• The WFF is comprised of 11,122 cubic yards of concrete.
• WFF is home to Metropolitan College classrooms, which comprise 14,000 square feet of space.