The global carrier is building RFID into 60,000 vehicles this year—and 40,000 next year—to automatically detect millions of tagged packages.
The roll-out is part of the global company’s vision of intelligent packages that communicate their location as they move between shipper and their destination.
After building RFID reading functionality into more than 1,000 distribution sites across its network, tracking millions of “smart packages” daily, global logistics company UPS is expanding its Smart Package Smart Facility (SPSF) solution.

UPS is in the process this summer of equipping all its brown trucks to read RFID tagged packages. A total of 60,000 vehicles will go live with the technology by the end of the year, with another approximated 40,000 coming into the system in 2025.

The SPSF initiative began before the pandemic with planning, innovation and piloting intelligent packaging. Today, the majority of UPS facilities have been equipped with RFID readers and tags are being applied to packages as they are received. Each package label is connected to key information about the package’s destination.

The average UPS sorting facility has about 155 miles of conveyor belts, sorting over four million packages every day. The seamless operation requires tracking, routing and prioritizing packages. By building the RFID sensing technology into its facilities, the company has eliminated 20 million barcode scans from daily operations.

For the RFID industry, UPS’ sheer volume of packages shipped daily may make this initiative the largest implementation of UHF RAIN RFID technology to date.