As of today, UPS has four top-level operating jobs:
- Nando Cesarone runs the global air network and gateways, surface transportation, buildings and engineering, automotive, the Intelligent Network of the Future and sustainability.
- Matt Guffey runs the U.S. businesses.
- Wilfredo Ramos runs International, Healthcare and Supply Chain Solutions.
- A Chief Global Commercial Strategy Officer—still to be hired—will run strategy, marketing and communications, product management and pricing.
UPS’s 2022 structure put U.S. small package, transportation, UPS Airlines, automotive and global buildings and systems engineering under Cesarone. Kate Gutmann ran International, Healthcare and Supply Chain Solutions, including their operations and sales. Guffey later held strategy, U.S. sales, marketing, communications and the On Demand Network. A global airline and global engineering operation therefore reported through the U.S. business. International operations reported elsewhere.
With this new move, the aircraft, the gateways, the buildings and the feeder network sit under one executive. The businesses filling that network are elsewhere, and the announcement doesn't say where the package cars will go. My curiosity is whether this network ends up feeling like a platform, or a matrix.
UPS chose this moment after reducing Amazon volume by more than half from 2024 levels and closing daily operations at 45 buildings in the first half of 2026; 44 closed permanently. (Gutmann is also retiring after 37 years, which probably factors in somewhat.) The August announcement says the Amazon draw-down and network reconfiguration finished in June. UPS’s second-quarter filing says the broader Network Reconfiguration and Efficiency Reimagined programs will run into 2027.
The announcement gives Cesarone operational oversight, but is ambiguous about capital allocation, service-level authority or sales. These are all interactive, dependent pieces: pricing changes volume; volume changes routes, staffing and asset use; service exceptions for one account can challenge capacity elsewhere. None of those decisions belongs wholly to one of the new jobs. Does Healthcare pay for dedicated network capacity? Can a market reject a global standard? Can the commercial chief sell a service level that Operations finds inefficient? These tie-breaks are what makes a system such as this work well, and there are potentially thousands of them to negotiate. Without clarity in these spaces, or a culture that allows mid-level leaders to resolve conflict effectively, those calls will end up on CEO Carol Tomé's desk.
What about their competitors? One FedEx combined Express, Ground, Services and other operating companies inside Federal Express Corporation, with a unified air-ground network. They still have separate operating chiefs for U.S./Canada and Airline/International. On June 1, FedEx Freight became an independent public company. Air and ground parcel became one network; Less-than a Truck Load (or LTL) left the company. DHL kept its divisions. Its September 1 reorganization put Express, Global Forwarding, Supply Chain, eCommerce and Post & Parcel Germany into separate legal entities. Each division has its own headquarters. DHL AG, Global Business Services and Customer Solutions & Innovation provide group management, shared internal services, key-account management and innovation.
Coming back to UPS: at some point, a healthcare customer is going to need an exception that makes the global network less efficient. The new top leadership team (yes, with one role vacant) will need to figure out which side of the matrix wins out. This is a lot easier when these teams have a lot of history with each other, and in the case of the operating leaders, it's around three decades, with Cesarone starting as a part-time pre-loader in 1990. I'll be tracking how well this works.
