For UPS executive, Olympics a marathon

By Jim Tharpe

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The UPS point man for the 2012 London Olympics isn’t looking for a good place to eat in the English capital. He’s not looking for a decent place to stay. He’s already got those basics figured out.

What Dan Brutto, president of UPS International, would really like to find is a good Bikram Yoga studio.

The 53-year-old Brutto, a key member of UPS’ 12-person senior management team at its Sandy Springs headquarters, spends up to 20 days a month overseas, much of it crowded into airplane seats or crumpled into ever-varying hotel beds. He’s been known to visit nine cities in six countries in a dozen days for the shipping giant, which operates in 200 countries and territories.

“I would come back from a trip, and I would say to my family, ‘My back is killing me,’ ” Brutto said. “And my youngest daughter would say, ‘Dad, you got to come with me to this yoga place.’ ”

So the middle-age Brutto, a blunt-talking Chicago native who worked his way up the UPS food chain for three decades, sheepishly wandered into an Alpharetta “hot yoga” studio with his college-age daughter, Danielle. The thermostat was north of 100 degrees, the humidity sweltering. Brutto struggled with even the most basic of the 26 poses.

“The first time, I almost passed out,” he said. “But I came home, and I actually felt pretty good. So, I did it three times that week.”

Since then, Brutto has become a regular. He’s located hot yoga studios in Singapore and Shanghai. But he’s still on the hunt in London, which will become his second home as he helps build and oversee the shipping, warehousing and logistics behind the 2012 Games.

Olympics ‘like 
a start-up’

UPS, which has 340,000 U.S. employees (and 68,000 in other countries), collected 2008 revenues of about $51.5 billion and delivered about 3.9 billion packages and documents. That volume is currently about evenly split between domestic and international deliveries. But going forward, UPS is looking to international expansion to fuel much of its growth.

The company’s main competitors are Federal Express, and globally, DHL and TNT.

UPS’ Olympics sponsorships play a vital role in its international outreach and its ability to compete. UPS has been an Olympic sponsor for the 1996 Games in Atlanta, the 1998 Winter Games in Japan and the 2000 Summer Games in Australia. But it was at the 2008 Beijing Games where the company began to take a hands-on role.

“Before, we would essentially write a check,” Brutto said. “But then we said, ‘Let’s do what we do best.’ And that’s manage the supply chain of the Olympics.”

UPS now donates its services as a “value in-kind” contribution for the sponsorship. UPS declined to put a dollar value on its London services, but some European news outlets have pegged them at about $30 million.

“Every Olympics is like a new start-up,” Brutto said. “It’s like starting up a new company that lasts for five years and then shuts down.”

Those who know Brutto, a Loyola University graduate and the son of a Chicago accountant, say he is a detail-oriented executive in a complex worldwide shipping operation that is all about schedules and details.

“He’s extremely intellectual, and he’s driven for self-education,” said Dow Dameron, the chief operating officer for UPS’ Georgia district. “He’s very organized, and he has to be.”

Dameron, who worked with Brutto in Dallas, said one of Brutto’s best assets is his long history with the company. He began in 1975 as a part-timer in college, loading Cleveland-bound trucks in Chicago. Brutto has also driven a delivery truck, worked the 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. shift overseeing long-haul truckers and criss-crossed the country in various executive posts for the company.

“He takes the time to make sure he’s knowledgeable about all aspects of the business he’s responsible for,” Dameron said. “He knows the business, and he doesn’t accept anything less than being on plan.”

Building brand, jobs

In Beijing, Brutto’s role included supply-chain planning, inventory control, warehouse management and overall logistics. It took years to plan and had to be executed with the whole world watching.

“It was the most complex thing we did logistically in 2008,” Brutto said. “We shipped 19 million items that included everything from tons of TV equipment to balance beams to 254 canoes and 15,000 costumes.”

In China, the company had to ramp up from 400 to 2,100 employees.

We actually had people from the [Chinese] army working for us in the end,” he said. “They had 2008 drums in the beginning ceremonies. They actually had 32 extra in case anything happened to any of them. They still haven’t figured out what to do with all those drums and costumes. They’re still in a warehouse.”

While landing an Olympics sponsorship is a marketing coup for the company, it does not immediately translate into more jobs in metro Atlanta, where 10,000 UPS employees live and work — 1,600 of those are at the Sandy Springs offices. Eventually, however, it does spell more jobs for the metro area.

“We will have more and more people coming into Atlanta as we become more and more of an international company,” Brutto said. “You will see more Asians and more Europeans who will come here to work in our corporate headquarters.”

In London, Brutto said, the company will hire about 2,000 people, but about three-fourths of those jobs will go away within three months after the Games end. The real incentive for the company, he said, is the “brand awareness” created by the sponsorships.

That, in turn, creates more business, he said. And that creates jobs.

“Every 35 international packages we get at UPS creates a job,” he said. “This gives us the ability to demonstrate our capabilities on a global stage.”

In China, he said, UPS has added 1,750 jobs since the 2008 Games.

Growth abroad seen

The recession has had its impact on UPS. Shipping units are not down all that much, Brutto said, and are actually up for its international operations. There have been no major layoffs. But many shipping clients are now shopping for cheaper rates.

“People are buying the least expensive product in the marketplace,” he said. That has ripple effects throughout the economy, affecting everything from how many delivery trucks UPS orders to how it runs its air network. The company has more than 200 aircraft in service.

Despite the current downturn, Brutto sees huge international growth potential for the company in the years ahead. The growing Chinese middle class, he said, is just now beginning to consume U.S. goods, which they view as status symbols.

“We haven’t even tapped into this,” he said. “I hope in this bad economy we don’t get into this protectionist state of mind where we want to close down our borders. There is a tremendous opportunity for U.S. exports.”

Meet Daniel J. Brutto

Title: President of UPS International

Recent assignment: UPS go-to guy for the 2012 London Olympics

Education: 1978 business degree from Loyola University; 1981 MBA from Keller Graduate School of Management

Residence: Duluth

Hometown: Chicago

Family: Wife of 25 years, Lisa, and two daughters, both in college.

Unusual job challenge: “I’ve eaten food in some countries that I didn’t even want to know what it was. Fortunately, I’ve got a good stomach for it. I can’t remember the last time I was sick.”