UPS is pulling back from a key distribution hub in Alabama, a move that crystallizes how its break with Amazon is reshaping the company’s entire U.S. network. The closure, part of a broader plan to strip out roughly $8 billion in costs, is landing hardest on workers and local officials who once saw parcel logistics as a dependable growth engine.
What looks like a single facility shutdown is in fact the local face of a national strategy: UPS is shrinking its Amazon exposure, consolidating capacity, and betting that a leaner network will deliver higher margins even as revenue growth slows.
Montgomery’s hub feels the shock first
The decision to wind down operations at the Montgomery UPS distribution facility turns a national restructuring into a very local crisis. State filings and local reports indicate that UPS is preparing to cut more than one hundred jobs at the site, with notices pointing to layoffs beginning around Februa as the company scales back activity in Montgomery, Alabama. For a mid sized metro that has spent years courting logistics and manufacturing employers, the loss of a major parcel hub is a direct hit to both household incomes and the city’s pitch as a distribution crossroads.
Local coverage underscores how abrupt the shift feels on the ground. One notice from the Montgomery UPS distribution facility describes plans to lay off employees and references a process to provide support as the site winds down, while another report details expectations that roughly 130 positions could be eliminated as the company implements its national plan to streamline operations and align capacity with demand. Those figures track with a separate filing that cited 128 jobs at risk in Montgomery, suggesting that nearly the entire workforce at the facility could be affected as UPS executes its broader restructuring.
Network Reconfiguration and the four site shakeup
Montgomery is not an isolated case, it is one node in what UPS has described as a sweeping “Network Reconfiguration” that is closing or trimming operations at multiple facilities. Company disclosures indicate that UPS will close or reduce operations at four locations in the coming months as part of this overhaul, a move framed as necessary to match capacity with shifting parcel flows and to concentrate volume in the most efficient buildings. The Alabama hub is caught up in that process, alongside other sites that are being shuttered or scaled back as the company redraws its U.S. map to support a smaller, more profitable footprint…