United Parcel Service's Island Deliveries Still Resemble Those of 100 Years Ago
By Karen Gould

Passing by summer cottages Brigadoon and Anne Cottage on Main Street is the Mackinac Island UPS team on the way to make deliveries Wednesday, August 8. Pictured (from left) are dray horses Queen and Red, driver Eddie Wilson, bicycle and cart driver Keith Jordan, and shipping manager Sara Chambers. Missing from photograph is seasonal helper Holly Cole.

United Parcel Service delivery on Mackinac Island is a reflection of the company's early operations, which began 100 years ago in Seattle, Washington, August 28, 1907. Back then, the company was called American Messenger Company and it delivered messages by bicycle and horse-drawn carriages. Today, UPS has grown to a $42.6 billion corporation, operating a fleet of aircraft and trucks in more than 200 countries and territories, but on Mackinac Island, where motorized vehicles are banned, delivery is still by bicycle and horse-drawn wagon.

Here, during the summer, UPS trucks are ferried to the Yoder Dock near the Island House Hotel, where their packages are unloaded onto drays and bicycle carts for delivery to businesses and homes. As they move along two manual conveyor belts, they are sorted by shipping manager Sara Chambers of Mackinac Island, seasonal driver Keith Jordan of Kincheloe, seasonal driver Eddie Wilson of Long Beach, California, and seasonal helper Holly Cole of St. Ignace.

The group works together and independently to organize all of the boxes so they can be placed on a dray, cart, or bicycle basket and taken to their destination. Shipments are divided by location, including Main and Market Streets, Harrisonville, East Bluff, and West Bluff. Two dray horses, Queen and Red, are tied to a nearby post and wait patiently while the dray is loaded.

Mr. Wilson works for Mackinac Island Service Company as a contract driver for UPS, and he plans his dray-loading process by packing early-stop packages to the front of the wagon. He has been working on the Island for 13 years because he likes the pace.

"It's nice here, quiet and peaceful," he said. Long Beach, he said, is too crowded. He works here from May to November, then works part time for UPS back home.

This is Keith Jordan's first season on Mackinac. He was assigned the job, and he likes it. The bicycle and cart he sometimes uses will make deliveries to homes and other areas that are too difficult or time-consuming for a dray.

Sara Chambers has worked for UPS on Mackinac Island for about 15 years. She manages the distribution from the Arnold Transit freight boat from May through Labor Day. After that, when volume drops, the packages are brought here on a regular Arnold passenger ferry, and when the boats stop running, usually sometime in January, she coordinates shipments here to the airport by Great Lakes Air of St. Ignace.

No matter how the packages get to the Island, they are delivered to their destination by horse or bicycle. But the result is the same.

"We have door-to-door service," she notes, "just like in a city."