LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – UPS may be forging ahead into a future where unmanned drones are dropping packages on your door-step, but the Atlanta-based shipping giant is also preparing for growth in its old-school airline business.
Flanked by Gov. Matt Bevin and Mayor Greg Fischer, UPS officials on Thursday touted plans to invest $750 million in its Worldport global shipping hub at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport during the next 15 years, and to add 1,000 high-paying jobs during that period.
The investment plans are not entirely ironed out, but the first project will be a $220 million, 262,000-square-foot hangar to allow for maintenance on the company’s growing fleet of airplanes.
The hangar will be able to accommodate two Boeing 747-8 jets, the largest in the UPS fleet. Buoyed by healthy growth in next-day air packages – UPS’ most expensive shipping option – the company plans to add 49 planes (747-8s and 767s) to its fleet by 2022, bringing the total to 285.
Thursday's news conference was inside UPS' only other air hangar -- a building over 300,000 square feet at the Louisville hub.
Besides the hangar, scheduled to open in 2022, UPS also plans “ramp and taxiway improvements, renovated office buildings, training facility expansions, and new operations offices” at Worldport, its Louisville hub.
UPS didn’t spell out exactly what sort of jobs would comprise the 1,000 new hires other than “pilots, aircraft mechanics and support staff.”
UPS spokesman Mike Mangeot said most of the jobs are related to the hangar and the line maintenance that will be performed on airplanes.
Louisville had the inside track for the hangar project, as Worldport is the company's main air hub. It also has heavy air presence in Anchorage, Alaska, where planes often stop to refuel, and a handful of regional air hubs around the country.
Still, Bevin insisted that the hangar could have been built elsewhere and that state and city officials had to convince UPS to put it in Louisville.
"This was highly competitive; it was not a given," Bevin told reporters.
Mangeot declined to say what other locations UPS considered for the hangar project.
The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority last week to approve up to $40 million in state and local taxpayer incentives that UPS could earn over the 15-year period, if the company follows through with the 1,000 jobs.
Documents approved by the authority show the average hourly total compensation of the new jobs, including the value of benefits like health insurance, will be $70 – one of the highest-wage incentive projects in the state’s history.
Bevin has made corporate investment commitments, such as the one made by UPS, a central plank of his campaign for re-election in November.
UPS employs about 20,000 between fulltime and part-time roles – including package handlers, drivers, pilots, mechanics and corporate – in Louisville and southern Indiana.
For purposes of the state incentives, the company’s fulltime, Kentucky resident employment in Louisville was reported to be 6,436.
