Erie Has Snow and Hills, Yet UPS Claims They Still Have Trouble

You would think that a city used to snow would have systems in place to handle it.

Photo by Alberto Restifo on Unsplash

For the last few days, the city was dealing with a clipper coming from Canada. Parts of Erie County got anywhere from 12 inches (1 foot) of snow to up to 2 feet or more. In the part of the county we’re currently in, we got closer to the lower end of the storm totals. We’re in a hillier part of the county, but there are plenty of vehicles that come through every day.

I get that we’re situated in a valley with a potentially icy and steep hill going into the campground, but because of the weather and the terrain here, we’ve run into a myriad of problems. The location of our camp is the main problem, here. The main roads have already been salted and plowed.

We are in a private family campground down a steep hill. The best bet is to take a four-wheel, all-wheel, or front-wheel drive vehicle with snow tires. If you try to go down not prepared, you can slip or get stuck at the bottom of the hill, unable to get back to the main road.

Previously, we haven’t had much trouble getting deliveries, rides, or anything else we’ve needed to this point, even with more snow previously. We’ve been waiting for an important package for the last few days.

The original delivery date for the package was supposed to be last Monday, before the New Year. We understood when the package was delayed a couple of days because of the brunt of the storm. The driving conditions in the middle of the week were near white-out with heavy snow and heavy wind. We wouldn’t have expected anyone to deliver in that.

Then there was New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day (Wednesday and Thursday). We don’t expect delivery drivers to do anything on holidays. So, then came Friday. We were sure that it would come. The weather cleared up. Sure, it was cold. But it’s cold here in winter. That doesn’t stop people from doing their jobs.

Then we saw that the package was out for delivery. Great. We were expecting our delivery around noon. We could breathe easier. The campground owner had plowed a path down the hill. He had put down salt and made sure the path wasn’t too icy for people to get down.

Then we got the message an hour or so later. “Delivery was attempted, but the driver could not reach the destination.” We knew what that meant. We had a UPS driver who couldn’t even accomplish what the USPS seems to accomplish frequently, a trek down the hill, even if it’s walking down the hill (roughly 1,000 feet).

The last major delivery we got in snowy weather was attempted and delivered on time by USPS. If a postal worker can get down that steep, yet manageable hill, why can’t UPS?

This is Erie, Pennsylvania, after all.

You would think that the company would equip its snow veterans in the county with snow tires and all-wheel-drive vehicles. Sure, it costs more, but it’s an investment and a necessity here. I’ve talked to many residents in hillier parts of the county, and they’ve all told me the same thing. Sometimes companies like UPS and FedEx don’t want to deliver to their houses on time when the conditions are even a little icy.

That’s a huge problem, considering the county itself houses around 250,000 residents, many of them living in hillier and more rural parts of the county.

People deserve and need to get their deliveries on time, especially for people who have essentials delivered to them. Our biggest problem down here is our vehicle won’t make it up and down the hill all winter because we have front-wheel drive without snow tires, but we’re not a delivery company. We’re practically stuck down here, at the mercy of the weather and other people to survive.

What if we needed essential groceries and an emergency came up? Would a good excuse not to come down be that the hill is too icy or steep, even when it’s not?

In this winter environment, in a city that gets around 100 inches of snow annually, there should be better preparedness in place for these people. They should be held accountable when they simply don’t want to do their jobs because it’s too inconvenient, as in this case, since the owner already plowed and salted the road.

Luckily, the package isn’t at that level of emergency need, but it still gives me pause that these companies are able to allow their employees to get away with this, and also not equip them with the proper equipment to complete their jobs.