--- description: Find out why UPS was selected for the inaugural list title: TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2021: UPS image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt152e19dde1aac018/698a18fc8fd2eec83b36281d/ups-time100-companies.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Apr 26, 2021 # UPS Delivering the goods by [Don Steinberg](/author/don-steinberg/) ## Don Steinberg Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close  Illustration by Tomi Um for TIME Shoppers stuck at home avoiding COVID-19 in 2020 [ordered goods](https://time.com/5810811/coronavirus-shopping-data/ "undefined") like it was Christmas in July, August and the rest of the year. That was good news for the world’s largest package-delivery company—UPS—which shipped more than 25 million parcels a day during the final months of 2020\. “Even my relatives who are older are shopping online. Before, they would never do that,” said Carol Tomé, the longtime Home Depot chief financial officer who came out of retirement in 2020 to become UPS’s first female chief executive, in a call with analysts in February. Along with diversifying modes of transportation—using land and rail when aircraft were grounded—and looking at innovations like drone delivery, she has been overseeing [vaccine deliveries](https://time.com/collection/video/?vid=6224260446001 "undefined") in partnership with Operation Warp Speed. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-companies/5953744/ups-2/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-companies/5953744/ups-2/"},"headline":"UPS","datePublished":"2021-04-26T17:43:47.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-31T05:08:50.188Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-companies/5953744/ups-2/","keywords":["Lists","franchise","TIME100 Companies"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt152e19dde1aac018/698a18fc8fd2eec83b36281d/ups-time100-companies.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Don Steinberg","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/don-steinberg/"}],"creator":"Don Steinberg","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt152e19dde1aac018/698a18fc8fd2eec83b36281d/ups-time100-companies.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-companies/5953744/ups-2/","name":"UPS"}}]}] ```