Andrew Moran of St. Thomas, Ont., is normally just a regular UPS driver. There’s not much fanfare to the job. The 43-year-old wears the brown uniform, drives the brown truck and delivers brown boxes.
But on one day late last month, he was a wide-eyed preschooler’s hero.
Malcolm Oshalla’s obsession with delivery trucks started about six months ago, said his grandmother, Colleen Murray, 63.
“He decided he was going to clean out his mother’s fridge,” she laughed. “He put it in the back of his little car and delivered it all over the house.”
That’s when Malcolm’s grandparents had an idea.
“It all started out with my husband finding the UPS little outfit for him,” Colleen said. Then, she built Malcolm a tiny UPS truck around a toy car.
Next, she tracked down her friendly neighbourhood UPS driver.
“Her friend who lives across the street came up to me,” said Moran, who has been driving UPS trucks for 13 years. “I was delivering across from their house. She just mentioned that someone was having a birthday and they love UPS, so I figured I’d stop by.”
A few days before Malcolm’s birthday on July 3, Moran pulled up in front of the house.
“The truck shows up and there’s Andy and my grandson — [Malcolm] just went straight to him, hand in hand,” said Murray. “He was now Andy’s new best friend.”
“I did not expect the [replica] UPS truck,” said Moran. “I figured there probably would be an outfit or something, but the UPS truck was the icing on the cake. I thought it was so cool.
“The fact that he likes UPS so much was pretty awesome,” he said. “It felt pretty good.”
“I cannot thank him more. It meant so much,” said Murray. “He just looked at you with such admiration and you’re just a natural.”