UPS Freight expanding hours in Canada

UPS Freight is expanding its pickup and delivery hours for customers served through the company's London, Ontario, facility.

The expanded service puts trucks on the street 1½ hours earlier each morning for deliveries in the Ontario area. The vehicles will stay out three hours later for pickups.

Coupled with improvements to the UPS Freight operating network and cross-border route structure, customers will be able to tender freight as much as three hours later in the day and still reach two-day delivery destinations as far south as Mississippi.

Yesterday's service announcement complements a yearlong effort to reduce transit times to and from Canada. In all, nearly 1,000 transit times between Canadian points and the United States have been reduced in 2009.

"This expansion of our service hours demonstrates the very deep commitment that we're making to customers on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border," said UPS Freight President Jack Holmes. "For freight shipments to and from Canada, UPS Freight is the standard others will be measured against."

UPS Freight also announced that veteran Canadian transportation specialist Allan Robison had joined the company as a vice president of sales and will lead UPS Freight's Canadian sales efforts. Until his retirement last year, Robison worked as president of Canada's largest trucking company, Reimer Express.