UPS Has A “Circle Of Honor” For Drivers Who Go 25 Years Without An Accident

(frankieleon.)

Considering your average driver — the person who doesn’t spend her entire workday behind the wheel — can barely go a decade without getting into some sort of fender-bender, it’s an accomplishment when people who drive all day, every day in a large brown truck can go decades without a ding on their driving records.

From the Today We Learned file… Today we learned that UPS actually has a “Circle of Honor” recognition for drivers who have managed to not only stay with the company for at least 25 years, but have been behind the wheel without an accident during all that time.

According to UPS, which employs around 100,000 drivers worldwide, it added a whopping 1,519 drivers to the Circle this year alone, bringing the total number of longtime safe-drivers to 7,221.

Between retirement, rising odds of an accident, and people who choose to just not drive for that long, there is a steep drop between the number of UPS drivers with 25 years of accident-free driving and those with at least 35 years. Only 394 Circle of Honor members have earned that distinction.

Given that UPS drivers are primarily male, it’s perhaps not a surprise that only 146 women have been driving for the company long enough to join the Circle.

The party thins out even more when you extend that timeline to 40 years, with only 42 drivers having both stayed with the company and stayed out of an accident.

The most senior Circle member has gone 51 years — and delivered some 5 million packages — without crashing.

The Newark Star-Ledger talked to a New Jersey driver who has gone nearly 44 years on the job sans accident.

“I don’t think I’m any better than anyone else here,” he said. “They’re all good drivers. We’re all taught defensive driving. If you’re not always on the defensive, you’re going to have a problem.”

While we’ve been known to share our readers’ displeasure with UPS (and FedEx, and USPS) drivers who do things like drop-kick packages or leave them in the garbage, it is occasionally good to recognize that there are plenty of dedicated drivers out there who take pride in their jobs… or at the very least don’t get into car accidents on the job.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist