Photos: How UPS Next Day delivers

On his Road Trip 2008 project, CNET News.com reporter Daniel Terdiman has visited a wide variety of destinations in the South, including Kennedy Space Center, a Lockheed Martin military simulation training center, and the Corvette assembly plant.

Last week Terdiman spent a late night at UPS' Worldport operation in Lousville, Ky. This mammoth facility is the international mail and package carrier's worldwide air cargo distribution center, handling about 800,000 to 900,000 next-day packages a night that are brought in by about 95 planes. It processes an additional 200,000 to 300,000 two-day packages every day.

Though not the biggest building in the world, Worldport comprises 5.1 million square feet and incorporates some of the most advanced package-sorting technology that exists today. The system is designed to sort everything efficiently, getting letters, boxes, and other packages off the planes they arrive on and on to the planes they will be sent out on in the shortest possible amount of time and with the minimum amount of human handling.

Here, Worldport workers pull an "air can," a large bin that is packed tightly with packages and loaded onto cargo planes, off a Boeing 757.

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