See Everything That Happens When a Package is Shipped

[Narrator] Have you ever wondered

what happens to a package once you take it to be shipped?

We did, so we rigged a camera inside a lucite box

and shipped it across the country to follow its journey

all the way to delivery.

If you're sending a gift or buying one online

this holiday season, it's likely that a company like UPS

will be handling your presents at one point or another.

And this season, they'll be delivering

over 700 million packages.

Yeah.

Places like the US Postal Service will be delivering

roughly 16 billion cards, letters and packages.

And it all starts here.

Once your package is ready to shipped,

a driver picks it up, loads it onto a truck,

and heads off to a shipping hub.

Once it arrives at the hub, the package is put

on a complex network of conveyor belts

where the journey begins.

But when shipping volume basically doubles,

how do they keep track of it all?

The short answer is a lot of automation and technology.

But don't worry, the robots aren't taking our jobs.

As your package zips through one of their facilities,

it goes through a laser scanning tunnel

that reads the smart label on the box and redirects it,

so it's properly loaded on a truck or plane

that is headed to its destination.

In this case, it's going on a plane.

So it has to be loaded onto an air can.

That's fancy talk for a container built specifically

for air travel.

Once the can is packed to the gills,

it's loaded on a plane, it takes off

and heads towards its final destination.

UPS operates around 940 flight segments a day

within the US to ensure that your last-minute impulse buy

arrives on time.

When the plane arrives, the air can is unloaded

and the complex dance of sorting and scanning begins again.

Now, once the package is loaded on the right truck,

the driver heads for the final destination

and we have a pretty good idea of what happens from here.

Pure package opening bliss.