Driver Chris Begley’s death in August underscores a list of alleged heat-related incidents across Texas
Neysa Lambeth was in Florida caring for her ailing father on 23 August 2023 when she received a call from her husband, Chris Begley, who had worked as a UPS driver for 28 years in Texas.
Begley, 57, had collapsed from the heat while delivering packages. Lambeth said a manager picked him up and took him home to recover. He had fallen ill a couple of times from the heat over the previous two years, Lambeth said, and she had picked him up from the UPS service center on those occasions.
“This time I wasn’t home, and so instead of taking him to the hospital or dialling 911, they took him home to an empty house and left him,” said Lambeth.
Requiring new trucks to have AC was apparently the number 1 sticking point in their Unions new contract. Management fought it tooth and nail, but the union got it.
In response, UPS has simply not bought any new trucks in almost a year. Of the 100,000 UPS trucks, the ones with AC count in the “hundreds” by UPS executives own admissions.
UPS is far and away the best mail/package service in my area. The drivers are nice, the service is prompt, the delivery estimates are accurate, you can track the driver when they’re going to deliver soon (very handy if you need to run home to sign for the package), and the packages always seem to arrive more consistently in good condition.
The fact they don’t have AC in a dark colored truck is insane to me. During really hot days, I leave a cooler with ice and waters/gatorades for USPS and UPS and anyone else that needs. The UPS driver caught me leaving the house one day and thanked me profusely and mentioned that another driver had passed out from heat in the back of their truck grabbing packages while idling in front of a house.
I guess eventually people in the neighborhood got concerned when the truck had been there in the middle of the road for a while and luckily found him and called 911. Don’t know for sure, but it seems very possible that guy would have died in the back of that truck if the neighbors hadn’t found him.
That shouldn’t even be on the union to negotiate; it ought to be on OSHA to decree.
With Chevron gutted, it needs to be an explicit federal law.