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It's not just manpower they're scrambling for this time of year. Around here, they're using Budget and Ryder rent-a-trucks for deliveries to (and pickups from) shipping stores (UPS stores, places that offer mailbox service, etc). Uniformed UPS drivers, rented box trucks.

Talking to the owners of one such place, they said UPS has done that the last few years, freeing up more of their recognizable brown trucks for residential delivery.

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I would bet there's more to it than just wanting "recognizable" trucks for residential deliveries. Using a box truck is less efficient because they don't typically have access to the box from the cab, so the driver has to get out and run around to open the door at each stop. But this isn't quite as big of an issue when they're doing commercial pickups/deliveries, because there's usually numerous packages at each stop, so getting out open the back isn't as much of a time sink per-package.

Fedex does the same, and I think many of those are actually used for home delivery.

A few years ago, I saw UPS deliveries in my neighborhood being done via a tiny trailer on a bicycle.

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