I used to be a manager at FedEx Ground, back before FedEx bought them. Originally they were called Roadway Package System, RPS for short, and we took a lot of care in our work as we were up and coming competing against big brown. Everyone in the company regardless of their position started off on a loading dock for two years, so everyone in the company had a feel for the front lines (kind of like every Marine has to be competent with a rifle).
When FedEx came in all that changed. Drivers at RPS always were owner/operators. the delivery truck driver owns his route. But FedEx changed the career progression so that other than front line dock management, nobody has to come up from the loading docks any more. Small outlying terminals like the one in our city were closed. Drivers are being pushed harder than ever in terms of the number of deliveries and pick ups every day. The driver for our city has to come up 90 miles from a larger city now instead of being based right here. He still has all his deliveries but now he has an extra hour and a half drive on each end of his work day.
FedEx bought Viking Frieght, Roberts Express along with RPS, then later bought Watkins and a few other regional freight haulers. Now they are so big the hard charging, customer oriented days are over. FedEx is huge now and since UPS and FedEx combines are more than 905 of the package business, they behave more like monopolists. I have had really bad service lately from FedEx Ground and advise people to stay away from them. The experience here does not surprise me. My FedEx driver even picked up a package left by the postal service thinking it was a call tag package I was shipping! I was, in fact, going to ship something through FedEx the next day, a package sent by an ebay seller to a customer on the opposite coast that somehow ended up on my door by mistake. Good ol' FedEx. Ha!
Btw, the automated sortation systems both UPS and FedEx use are very rough on the freight. Tubes are especially vulnerable to being bent where freight conveyors make 90 degree turns. I can still hear in my mind the squeak of boxes being crushed in a package jam at such a corner, followed by the explosion of packing peanuts and even freight falling off conveyors onto the floor. It is unacceptable that the package handlers (I called them package smashers) loaded an empty tube on the delivery truck and even worse the driver delivered it. This is people being pushed to the wall in terms of physical effort and hours worked speaking. FedEx have become slave drivers. I know, I saw it first hand. UPS and the Post Office are no different btw. Our letter carriers are all contractors who are fired right after Christmas every year, year after year, and rehired so they cannot accumulate any benefits. Nice, huh. The only USPS employees are the people at the Post Office itself, the rest are contract labor.
