A tiny bug has the potential to let its voracious appetite dig into many of the same foods we search for at the grocery store.
Standing between it and the 60% of the produce this country consumes is a team in Louisville, Kentucky.
The moment a plane pulls up to its Worldport ramp, the so-called "beetle exclusion team" bursts into action, nets up, eyes open and checking every container and person who goes on or off the plane.
The goal: no beetles on board.
"Whenever you first hear about it, you're like, 'You're going to really truly pay me to do this operation?'" says Worldport Beetle Exclusion Supervisor Rick Adkins.
UPS won't say how much it spends on its bug busting program, but add up a team of 65 just in Louisville plus the spray, the nets and the equipment to shield the planes and you get an idea that it's not cheap.
"There's no other company that does what we do to this extent," Adkins says.
If it sounds like a lot of bother for a bug, Rick explained, "This insect, as small as it is, it's really 7/16ths of an inch big. It's not really large, but it's the most destructive insect."
The Japanese beetle has made itself at home in Louisville, but the bug hasn't yet made its way across the Rockies.
UPS wants to make sure its planes don't give the greedy green bug a free ride because on the other side of those mountains are mounds and mounds of produce bound for dinner tables across the country.
"Sixty percent of our nation's produce is produced on the West Coast," Adkins says, "Anywhere from vineyards to further north in Washington and Oregon, you have nurseries for trees, shrubs and these beetles are attracted to those type of things. Strawberries, cranberries, anything of that nature comes from the west coast."
So each day from spring to fall crews with years of experience loading planes at UPS do their bug-busting best to beat the beetle.
"If we don't do our job, it affects everybody, our internal customer and our external customer," Adkins says.
Adkins says his crews stop anywhere from 40,000 to 60,000 beetles from bumming a ride each year.
The crew we followed is very good at their jobs.
Their planes are inspected each and every time by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the other end of the flight and so far this year, not a single live bug has made it onto one of their flights.
TXT 24
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