Join UPS in Ames as a Twilight Sorter | Hiring

Opportunity in Ames

Primary Details

• Role in Ames: Twilight Sorter
• Employer: UPS (Hiring in Ames)
• Worksite: Ames, IA
• This Ames-based role is an excellent opportunity for professionals skilled in relevant skills.
• Our UPS team in Ames, IA is growing.
• Benefit from working in Ames, a key hub for the Package Logistics And Fulfillment industry.

What You Get

• Pay: $22-$25/Hour (approx. $29.1k/Year)
• Benefits: A comprehensive benefits package is included.
• Clear growth pathways at our Ames office.

What You'll Do

• This role centers on your professional skills within the Package Logistics And Fulfillment space in Ames.

About UPS & Our Culture

Between 5:00 PM and 10:00 PM, the UPS fulfillment center processes the single largest daily wave of commercial pickup volume in the entire package logistics calendar. This is the twilight sort — the 4.5-hour window where millions of business-day packages collected from offices, retailers, and manufacturing facilities across the metro area funnel into our facility and must be sorted, palletized, and loaded onto linehaul trailers before their hard 10:30 PM departure deadlines. Our twilight sorter jobs are the most strategically critical shift in the building, and UPS fills them with focused, reliable associates who take real pride in clearing a massive nightly volume window under clock pressure. The Teamsters union contract protects every hour you work here with wages, benefits, and working conditions that no private warehouse twilight shift can honestly compete with.

What Our Team Says (Employee Reviews)

"The twilight sort is the most satisfying shift at UPS because the volume is real, the urgency is real, and the team effort required to clear it is real. We have 4.5 hours to move everything the city's businesses sent out today onto the right trailers before those trailers roll. When we hit it clean — every chute cleared, every trailer sealed on time — there is nothing like that feeling in any other twilight sorter job I have experienced. The Teamsters medical plan I got for working this shift is better than the coverage I carried at my last full-time day job." - Current Twilight Sorter, Seattle, WA.

Role Overview & Responsibilities

As a UPS Twilight Sorter, you process the peak commercial pickup volume during the 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM sort window inside our fulfillment center, operating at sustained belt speed to route every parcel accurately through the outbound sort system before the 10:30 PM linehaul departure window forces the dock doors closed for the night.

• Belt-Speed Label Reading: Read 5-digit destination zip codes and UPS Smart Label routing barcodes on packages moving at 150 to 200 feet per minute on the main sort conveyor, manually diverting each parcel to the correct destination chute using a physical push-sort gate or a pull-to-divert arm — accuracy must exceed 99.5 percent to avoid downstream misloads that generate customer service failures the following morning.
• Chute & Container Management: Monitor eight to twelve assigned outbound destination chutes simultaneously, pulling full container carts the moment they reach capacity and replacing them with empty ones without pausing the belt, then tagging each full container with its correct outbound trailer door assignment before moving it to the dock staging lane.
• End-of-Sort Trailer Sweep: Conduct a systematic final sweep of all assigned chutes in the final 15 minutes of the sort window, clearing every remaining package from every container onto the correct outbound pallet and confirming with the shipping associate that all loads are sealed before the 10:30 PM departure countdown reaches zero.

Benefits & Perks

Twilight Sorters receive the full Teamsters Local contract benefit package — medical through the Teamsters Health & Welfare Fund covering you and eligible dependents, a defined-benefit pension accruing at the contractual rate per year of service, paid personal days negotiated into the master agreement, and the UPS Earn & Learn program depositing up to $5,250 per calendar year directly toward your accredited college tuition. The 5:00 PM start time makes this the most university-schedule-compatible shift in our entire fulfillment center lineup, and the weekly paycheck deposits every Friday morning without exception.