Nevada congressman tours Las Vegas UPS plant, marvels at efficiency efforts

U.S. Rep. Cresent Hardy, R-Nev., on Tuesday toured a United Parcel Service center and praised UPS for using alternate fuels and sophisticated computers to find the most efficient routes to cut delivery costs by 15 percent.

“I like innovation and I like efficiency,” Hardy said in an interview at the end of his 90-minute tour and talk with two dozen UPS employees and leaders, including several who have worked for the company for nearly 40 years.

Hardy said UPS is a model company, providing generous salaries and benefits to drivers and managers.

“These are career jobs,” said Hardy, who opposes setting a minimum wage, preferring competition among companies to determine pay scales instead. “Competition will take care of itself.”

UPS drivers average $32.50 an hour with entry-level positions such as loaders paid $11 to $12 per hour. The federal and Nevada minimum wage is $7.25, or $8.25 for Nevada companies that don’t offer health care benefits.

President Barack Obama has proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, and most Democrats in Congress and across the country advocate for the same or higher.

Some 29 states and D.C. have higher minimum wages than the federal government. In Nevada, state Sen. Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, backs a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

Former U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., who lost to Hardy in the Nov. 4 election, backed Obama’s pitch for boosting the federal minimum to $10.10 when he visited the same UPS facility in February 2014. Horsford donned a brown UPS uniform and helped deliver some packages after his tour.

In contrast, Hardy, who wore a dark blue, pinstripe suit, held a UPS town hall-style meeting.

Tour guide Alex Suliscalleja said UPS has 1,200 natural gas-powered trucks nationwide, and will have 1,000 trucks running on propane by the end of the year.

About 100 trucks each day operate out of the Las Vegas package sorting center, she said.

“It’s a little quiet here,” Hardy said as he walked among sorting equipment that had been used by a graveyard shift crew to sort packages that typically leave the plant at about 9 a.m.

UPS managers also demonstrated a six-month-old computerized mapping system that drivers get on their hand-held DIADs, or Delivery Information Acquisition Devices, to determine the most efficient routes to delivery sites.

In Congress, Hardy sits on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. But he said he’s also interested in the UPS facility because the company operates within his 4th Congressional District.

A former construction company owner, the Mesquite native said he’s also interested in cost-saving efficiency. When his company was at its peak in 2006, he said his trucks used 12,000 to 18,000 gallons of fuel a day.

“If you can save one gallon here, that’s profit in your pocket,” Hardy said.

Hardy asked the long-term employees why they stayed with the same company so long.

Frank Garcia, a second-generation UPS worker following his father, said his first memories involved UPS.

“The company makes you feel like you’re an owner, too,” Garcia told Hardy.

J.D. Baker, a 38-year UPS employee, said he feels he has a positive effect on people’s lives.

“I’m going to work to make a difference,” Baker told Hardy.

Contact Laura Myers at lmyers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919. Find her on Twitter: @lmyerslvrj