North Texas UPS driver crashes after passing out from heat

North Texas – A North Texas UPS driver is out of the hospital after he passed out in the heat and his truck crashed.

On Friday, a driver filmed this cellphone video of a UPS truck crossing into oncoming traffic, missing a red car and crashing into a tree. According to the UPS drivers' union, Teamsters Local 767, the driver was suffering from heat-related illness when he lost control.

“While he was driving, he unfortunately succumbed to those heat-related injuries that he lost behind the wheel,” said David Reeves, chief officer of Teamsters Local 767.

The union says the driver, who is based in the Longview area, was asked to help Friday, driving from the UPS facility in McKinney. He left around noon but after a few hours he started vomiting and feeling sick from the heat.

“That's when he had to tell the supervisor that he could no longer complete his work for the day,” Reeves said.

But the union says his manager told him to return the truck to the facility. They say this violates UPS's own heat safety protocols and that the manager should have called 911.

“UPS needs to take responsibility for this and shut down these drivers, they need to be held accountable for driver safety along with the general public,” Reeves said.

The driver was hospitalized but is now recovering at home.

We reached out to UPS for comment, who told us they care deeply about the driver's well-being and will work with authorities to investigate what happened.

They say they spend more than $400 million a year on security training and also have:

• added more cooling equipment to facilities and vehicles
• equip employees with specialized cooling equipment
• provide access to ice and water

But according to Teamsters Local 767, UPS promised that all new vehicles purchased this year within their jurisdiction will be air conditioned, but Reeves says as far as he knows, none of them have air conditioning.

“This is unacceptable,” Reeves said.

Just last summer, a Dallas United States Postal Service employee Eugene Gates Jr. died of a heat-related illness while delivering mail on a hot June day.

“They have a multi-billion dollar industry and they are not looking out for the welfare of their employees,” his widow said.

Teamsters Local 767 hopes to sit down with UPS to find a solution so no one else gets hurt on the job.

“I think UPS needs to stay focused on taking care of their people over their packages is exactly our message,” Reeves said.