UPS Drivers Are Battling Deadly Heat—Without A/C in Their Trucks
One day when temperatures are in the upper 90s, Mike – a UPS delivery driver outside Orlando, Florida, says that at the start of the evening, he can start to feel confused and disoriented. This makes it more difficult to search for packages, which means more time in the oven -shaped rear cabin. “I have moments when I have to stop and take a break right to try to cool off, and go away and go to the service station and get into the coolers,” he told me. “I don’t remember how many times I had to be withdrawn from the road because I was not with it mentally.” In summer, he says, it is common for temperatures to the back of his truck reached 130 degrees.
“I was a landscaping and a construction worker. I was younger at that time and I just fed. As you get older, even with all the training, it goes back to you, “he said.
According to the Administration of Occupational Health and Safety (OSHA), “exposure to environmental heat” represented a little less than half (48%) of serious injury reports of couriers and express delivery workers since 2015. However, the injuries and deaths related to heat are notoriously difficult to quantify. Real numbers could be even higher. Overheated workers could go home to rest in air conditioning, only to disappear for hours later. These deaths are not always recorded as heat linked to death certificates. Symptoms can also go up over time. The driver of Texas Ups, Christopher Beggley, for example, spent several days at home after having passed out while delivering packages to Texas in August 2023; After a few days, he collapsed at home and was admitted to the hospital, where his organs closed. In one of the many payments of this type, the OSHA ordered UPS to pay a fine of $ 66,000 after its survey revealed that the company did not have access to medical care. While Begley’s widow maintained his death was the result of heat exhaustion, UPS said he was dead because of a problem with his heart.
The OSHA requires employers to ensure a safe work environment, but there are still no specific federal protections around heat. The Biden administration proposed such a rule last year which would force water and rest above a certain heat index, representing both temperature and humidity. He was not finalized when Trump took office, and the OSHA launched public hearings last week on the rule that will last until early July. While some experts consider the fact that he has not already been killed as a sign of hope, others fear that the White House can finalize a lower version which pre -empt the states and the municipalities of the implementation of their own standards. In recent years, the governments of states under the control of the Republican in Texas and Florida have prohibited cities and cities there by implementing local warmth protections in the workplace. Adding to the worries of the defenders of the future of the rule, Trump appointed the former UPS and the director of Amazon, David Keeling, to lead the OSHA. During the three years of Keeling as a senior company security official, ending in 2021, OSHA files show that around 50 UPS workers were “seriously injured” by heat exposure and required hospitalization.
In a public commentary on the proposed rule, the UPS World Health and Safety Head Chief, Cormac Gilligan, urged the OSHA to “remove normative thresholds in favor of a more flexible and performance -oriented approach” and allow companies to develop their own “personalized thermal safety solutions”. Its reference to “normative thresholds” probably refers to the requirements of the proposed rule which would oblige employers to provide 15 -minute breaks every two hours once the heat index reaches 90 degrees. Employers have argued Gilligan, are the best placed to “know their populations and circumstances of employees”, in particular “the metabolic work rate, clothing, basic acclimatization, sleep, hydration, previous heat disease, medical conditions, metabolic rate at rest, physical form, and even more”.
