Louisville, Ky. — Out where the hills are known as knobs, and the local bourbon is Jim Beam and Maker's Mark, UPS operates an airline hub that one almost needs a stiff drink to comprehend.

The 580-acre hub is located between the two parallel runways of Louisville International Airport. The package sorting facility, at 120 acres, is just a smidge smaller than Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport's main terminal complex.

David R. Lutman/Special (ENLARGE)

Baggage handler Andrea Shirley takes packages from a conveyor belt and packs them in the UPS 'cans' for air shipment from its Louisville hub.

David R. Lutman/Contract Photographer (ENLARGE)

CafePress.com was lured to Louisville from California to be near UPS' Worldport facility. Bob Marino, the company's vice president of operations, holds up a customized shirt.

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To get from inbound plane to connecting flight, 110 miles of conveyor belt take packages on a ride that would make Six Flags proud.

As overwhelming as this facility is, after getting a tour, one starts to sense that something's missing.

What's striking about Big Brown's Kentucky facility is there are no brown delivery trucks, probably the company's best-known symbol.

That's because the Worldport facility — which employs about 10,000 Kentuckians — really is all about one thing: planes. Not a single driver is employed by UPS Airlines, which makes its hub at Worldport.

Almost 9 percent of UPS' domestic packages at some point hit a conveyor belt in Louisville. Worldport handles 1.2 million packages a night, which descend from eight types of cargo planes.

But, as big as Worldport is today, it is about to get bigger and potentially busier. UPS and DHL have proposed a deal in which Sandy Springs-based UPS would fly the German carrier's packages into and within the United States. DHL would become UPS' largest customer, potentially adding $1 billion to UPS' income statement if a deal is inked. The deal could take months to finalize.

Even before the proposed deal, UPS had planned a $1 billion addition to Worldport. By 2010, Worldport will have two new wings. All told, the facility will be able to handle 487,000 packages in 5.1 million square feet — the equivalent of more than 113 football fields.

David G. Ross, a transportation analyst for Stifel Nicolaus, compared it to building a bridge before the old one fails. Even though UPS' domestic traffic has been slow because of the weakened economy, international volume is picking up, and UPS needs additional capacity to handle that.

"International is where the global package growth is," said Ross. "And the packages either originate or are destined for the United States, so UPS needed to expand the network, even if domestic isn't growing that much."

The Louisville hub is so important — and available skilled labor so scarce — that UPS, with the help of the state of Kentucky, has created a university program.

Workers — many of them teenagers and college students — agree to work a night shift, starting around 11 p.m. and ending around 3 a.m. — in exchange for tuition payments and bonuses for passing classes and advancing through school.

According to Mike Mangeot, a UPS spokesman in Louisville, only one in five Kentucky residents has a college degree. In Louisville alone, UPS employs 20,560 Kentuckians (they don't all work at Worldport). Statewide, the number is 23,924.

And although automation has largely taken skilled work out of the hub's operations, UPS recruits from Worldport to fill management ranks. The university perk, not to mention full benefits for part-time work, helps keep employee interest, despite the hours and physical labor.

Once Worldport expands, UPS will need another 5,000 workers. About one-third will be managers, pilots or mechanics, Mangeot said.

But the key to Worldport is understanding what Brown can do for you. Truth is —Big Brown has built a supply chain empire in the Bluegrass State. (And the division is finally starting to make money, noted Ross, the analyst.)

By virtue of the UPS air hub being in Louisville, the city has attracted a whole new genre of supply-chain-focused companies.

"It's very hard to describe to people the phenomenal logistics experience that it is at 3 in the morning, to see those jets come in, get filled up and go out again," said Eileen Pickett, the senior vice president of community and economic development for Greater Louisville, the metro area's chamber of commerce.

"We know there are at least 100 companies that have located to Louisville where the fact that UPS was here was a key fact in their decision-making," she said.

Many have planted giant warehouses in a wide swath around Louisville, to be near Worldport. Some drop shipments at the hub as late as 11 p.m. to get on the last cargo planes out.

CafePress.com, for example, relocated from Hayward, Calif., to be near the UPS hub. The firm creates personalized T-shirts, mugs, clocks, books and just about anything else that can be customized.

"Thanks to UPS," said Bob Marino, vice president of operations for CafePress. "We're here because of them. And the mayor was no slouch. He wanted to make sure we had incentives to move here from Hayward."

The move allowed the company to produce and mail out orders in one day. A conveyor belt in the warehouse — an idea borrowed from UPS — takes finished packages and dumps them into more than a dozen cardboard bins marked UPS Next Day Air, Second Day Ground, etc.

Zappo's, the online shoe retailer, also has a big warehouse in greater Louisville —again, encouraged with government incentives, said UPS' Mangeot.