UPS

What it is

UPS, United Parcel Service, is one of the world's largest package delivery companies, with ground, air and freight services across North America and internationally. It was founded in Seattle in 1907 and is based in Atlanta, Georgia. Its brown trucks and uniforms are among the best known in delivery. In Canada it serves businesses and consumers from its own network of facilities and retail access points.

UPS offers developer APIs for rating, shipping and label creation, address validation and tracking. A business system can request a rate, create a shipment and print the label in one step, then follow the parcel through to delivery and show the status to staff or customers. Business accounts get negotiated rates that the API returns for that account.

How I use it

• One of the four carriers I integrate with, alongside Canada Post, FedEx, Purolator.
• Integrations cover the general shipping work: rates, labels and tracking for parts and equipment shipments.
• Wired under my standing integration rules: sandbox first, keys kept out of code, and timeouts and retries for when the carrier's service is slow or down.
• Part of the work at the seams, where a system meets the carriers that ship a business's parts and equipment.

UPS is the right carrier for many cross-border and time-definite shipments, especially into the United States. Wiring it into the system that holds the order means the rate, label and tracking number all live on the same record instead of in a separate browser tab.

Questions