The Chicago Area Consolidation Hub (CACH) is a package sorting facility for United Parcel Service, located in the village of Hodgkins, Illinois.
CACH serves as a sorting facility for packages traveling in the United States and the world.
Construction began in October 1991[1] at the site previously occupied by the GM Truck and Bus manufacturing plant, with the CACH facility opening on March 31, 1995.
Packages are only handled during loading and unloading; all sorting takes place through a system of conveyor belts and push paddles, utilizing high-speed cameras to read the destination from a smart label to sort a package to its trailer.
Items that are not diverted go onto conveyor belts or the DA (Data Acquisition), which relabels packages.
Small packages are bagged at the east/west boundary and a series of conveyor belts, called bullfrogs on the mezzanine.
A secondary CACH facility, known as the "West Point Pad", is located in Hammond, Indiana, south of the Cline Avenue exit on the Indiana Toll Road at Calumet Avenue, within an eastbound entrance ramp cloverleaf leading onto the ITR (41°38′38″N 87°30′33″W / 41.643958°N 87.509272°W / 41.643958; -87.509272).
The lot is used to switch double and triple-tandem trailers to configurations acceptable to Illinois authorities and UPS CACH (the end portion of the ramp allows exit access back onto Calumet Avenue and west into Illinois on the ITR, via Cline Avenue or 141st Street).