- Hello.

- Hi, oh, thank you.

- Thank you.

You have a good one.

- I sure will.

You know, in these days of e-commerce, most of us get packages delivered to our front stoop all the time.

One of the biggest shippers, UPS, allowed our cameras to capture the most amazing five minutes of a package's journey.

- [Geoffrey] It happens here in south suburban Hodgkins, Illinois at the largest UPS ground sorting facility in the country.

This is where packages arrive from far and wide, are sorted, and are sent on their way.

This staggering facility employs 7,000 people and covers 1.5 million square feet.

- We have 9,000 conveyors, about 60 miles worth of conveyors, - Sixty miles?

That's Aaron Duell.

He's in charge of the automation that helps every package find its way from the trucks that bring them in to the trucks that send them on their way.

- Every package really should take, on average, about five minutes from the time it's unloaded until the time it goes into the trailer.

- Five minutes.?

- Five minutes.

- Wow, but I'm seeing like baby strollers and a barbecue, each one of these feels like a story to me.

- Every one of 'em a story.

When we talk to our employees, we say they could be cookies going to grandma, or you know, a piece of artwork, or it could be insulin going to somebody with diabetes.

- [Geoffrey] To move packages through this massive, mostly automated system in just five minutes, it takes an inventive team of tinkerers, like Aaron.

- How did you train for this?

Did you go to school for this?

- I went to school for engineering.

- So when you were a kid, were you always like building tinker toys?

- If a toaster broke, I would tear it apart, look at the insides and try and figure out how to fix and put it back together.

- Oh, yeah.

- [Geoffrey] And how our packages end up in the right trucks is a head spinning process that only an engineer could explain.

- So right now we're taking all the packages that have come off of our unload.

They've already gone through a singulator.

- A singulator?

- [Geoffrey] Time out.

These UPS folks speak a language of their own.

I need a translation.

- They've already gone through a singulator.

- A singulator?

Well, a simulator just makes sure that they're not side by side.

- Ah, okay.

- Make sure that they're spaced so that while they progress through this tunnel, this tunnel is going to wind up reading the UPS label.

And then it's gonna use that information to identify what load we're gonna divert to downstream.

- So these things are then getting shoved into the trucks.

- I wouldn't say shoved, I would say gently moved.

(laughter) - Ten nine eight sort belt photo eye blocked, 1098 sort belt photo eye blocked.

- [Geoffrey] With hundreds of thousands of packages flowing throughout the building, eagle-eyed supervisors have to problem solve as quickly as possible.

- So what are all these people doing in here?

- Well, they monitor all the systems that make it happen.

This is what you call the control room.

These folks are making sure that the computer is running entirely from inbound all the way to the outbound.

- [Geoffrey] After packages are sorted into as many as a thousand outbound semi trailers, they hit the road for destinations all across the country.

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