>I heard recently that part of the reason UPS went public was that
>they were losing a lot of money on these small packages that they
>deliver for online shopping.
If this is true, it just makes the whole e-biz model sound even weirder: losing money? Go public! The more you lose, the better the buy!!
There's no indication of their losing money on e-shipments in their IPO prospectus <http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1090727/0000940180-99-001334.t xt>, but I only skimmed the thing. They do claim they ship 55% of goods ordered over the net, though.
Doug