MrFedEx
Engorged Member
The issue with your crunch time was an attack on everyone's air networks. Ground was fine and probably smooth (except weather), when you close in on the last days you have a two fold problem. The last second buyers and then shippers changing services from Ground to Air to make the 25th. That means Ground is running under threshold and Air becomes saturated. It's math. I still don't fault the carriers all that much, even though they are far from perfect. There really is a lot of blame (if there has to be blame) to go around and that includes Amazon and buyers. Everyone wanted last second sales and didn't want to say "Too late for Christmas" and it's incorrect to think anyone can in today's bottom line environment can ramp up plane operations of this magnitude for a few days crunch.
Sorry, TUT, but it's more than math...it's bad management. Ground/HD geared-up for Peak and so did UPS. Express did little to nothing until it was way too late. Their "strategy" was to just have everyone do more stops. Simple, right? When I say Express, blew it, I'm understating the issue. There were many stations that were not caught-up until nearly New Years Day.
Like I said, the preparation was minimal at best. Upper management is trying to spin-it as though it wasn't that bad. It was really bad, and if you were on the inside, you'd know just how bad it was.