UPS boosts healthcare network with $48M cross-dock investment

An article from The carrier has opened and upgraded several temperature-controlled facilities near airports to strengthen its cold-chain transportation capabilities. Published June 30, 2026 Freezers are lined up at a UPS Healthcare freezer farm. The company has ramped up its investment in temperature-controlled infrastructure to capture more healthcare business. Courtesy of UPS This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback . UPS has invested $48 million in 27 temperature-controlled cross-dock facilities in several U.S. and international markets, part of its ongoing efforts to capture more business from healthcare shippers, the carrier announced last week . The investment included a combination of building cross-dock facilities from scratch and upgrading existing locations, Kiel Harkness, UPS' VP of strategy for healthcare, said in an interview with Supply Chain Dive. The company's temperature-controlled cross-dock locations include Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami and Toronto, he added. Most of the locations are within an airport or close to one, allowing quick access to short-term temperature-controlled storage between air and ground transportation movements, per the release. This helps UPS keep products like biologics and GLP-1 injectables within their necessary temperature ranges. "We want a seamless and as quick as possible transition from aircraft to the next mode, and that's a lot of what we've invested in creating for the pharma industry," Harkness said. Once a shipment is stored in a cross-dock location, UPS can consolidate it with other freight from the customer or break it up into separate shipments. "It could be we have a client who manufactures in one continent and then stores in our facilities in the destination continent, so we can break it and distribute from there," Harkness said. "So there's a number of kind of value-added activities that can happen in a cold chain cross-dock." The investment marks another way UPS has pushed to strengthen its global healthcare logistics capabilities , which has become a larger priority as it looks for more profitable volumes beyond Amazon and other e-commerce businesses. The company's healthcare portfolio generated more than $11 billion in revenue last year, per its annual report , up from about $10.5 billion in 2024. “We won’t forget healthcare ever, because healthcare is such an important part of our growth engine,” CEO Carol Tomé said in an April earnings call . “It is in every segment of our business with double-digit operating margins, and we’re going to continue to lean into that space in a meaningful way.” Rival FedEx is also chasing more healthcare business with the recent launch of a dedicated organization called FedEx Life Sciences . The company exited its 2026 fiscal year with nearly $10 billion in healthcare transportation revenue. Editor's note: This story was first published in our Logistics Weekly newsletter. Sign up here .