From The Chairman: A Commitment to Safety

[MrFedEx]

Dear Team Members,

Bravo Zulu, and thanks for allowing me to have a new net worth of $3.7 B. It's only through your stupidity and fright that I get wealthier each and every day.

But, I digress. Todays topic is SAFETY. It's important because we've had a lot of high-profile accidents recently that put us under the microscope with the authorities. It never looks good to run someone over when you're...umm, drunk. OK, guess we'll skip that one. Or to kill a bunch of innocent students in a flaming bus, or kill or maim anyone in a FedEx-logoed vehicle.

You see, safety costs money, and I hate to part with any of my cash, so we will all preach safety and have endless meetings about safety, and post Charlie Brown and Lucy posters about safety, but we will never actually DO anything to improve it. FedEx Legal has run the data, and it's still cheaper to pay-off lawsuits and damages rather than to do a better job of training drivers and running safe equipment. It's kind of like Ford and the Pinto. They knew the gas tanks would explode, but it was cheaper overall to pay the claims rather than to spend $15 per car and fix the issue.

You see, the Ground opco is a lot like a Pinto. It's low quality, cheap, and usually full of meth heads and hoodlums. But, it's very profitable. So, we continue to talk about improving safety all the time, and proving to people how much WE CARE, but, in reality, I'll happily take the collateral damage of dead cops, injured and/or killed motorists, and dead employees any day, because I MAKE MORE MONEY. With Ground, we just blame the contractor anyway, which usually gets us off the hook. Yes, I know that I really run Ground, but the courts haven't been able to prove it yet, so TOO BAD!!

At Express and Freight, we toss the employee under the bus and then let loose the FedEx Legal attack dogs to make sure we minimize costs. Hell, a few years back, we had a courier make a left turn in front of a motorcyclist and just splattered him. So, we fired the courier, and then bewildered the authorities and the survivors with a Legal barrage of 12 attorneys to prove that the motorcyclist was at fault for deciding to get up that day.

With me, it's always about the money. Ethics? Morals? Accountability? You'll find none of that with me. Damn, I've killed a couple of people and nobody has ever laid a finger on me other than a slap on the wrist.

I own each and every one of you, and don't you ever forget it.

Sincerely,

Frederick W. Smith

 

[59 Dano]

It's kind of like Ford and the Pinto. They knew the gas tanks would explode, but it was cheaper overall to pay the claims rather than to spend $15 per car and fix the issue.

Wouldn't be a MF post without MF repeating an absurdity.

 

[fdxsux]

This is the only From the Chairman I read anymore.

 

[MrFedEx]

Wouldn't be a MF post without MF repeating an absurdity.

Sure, Dano. The analogy between a shoddy, unsafe car, and a shoddy, unsafe operation isn't valid. Shill on, my man. Ford actually knew the dangers and ran the cost comparisons. Look it up, and see if you can find a picture of Richard Grimshaw.

FedEx probably runs from the same perspective. Costs to run a safe operation are higher than claims payouts.

 

[MrFedEx]

This is the only From the Chairman I read anymore.

They're quite useful at the bottom of a cat box or as bird cage liners. I haven't received one for a long time. I think Fred finally realized we were just tossing them.

 

[59 Dano]

Sure, Dano. The analogy between a shoddy, unsafe car, and a shoddy, unsafe operation isn't valid. Shill on, my man. Ford actually knew the dangers and ran the cost comparisons. Look it up, and see if you can find a picture of Richard Grimshaw.

Looked it up years ago. The Pinto's death rate from rear-end collisions was lower than the average for that class of car. Ford's "cost comparisons" weren't of Ford vehicles, but of domestic automobiles in general, addressed rollovers as opposed to rear-end collisions, and didn't run estimates of tort liabilities.

In college, I was taught about the "Pinto Memo," the smoking gun that made the wild claims that you are referencing. Sociology professors repeated those claims. Other professors had us actually delve into the document itself.

So, thanks for urging me to look into the matter, but not thanks. I already did, and much more in-depth than you, apparently.

 

[MrFedEx]

Looked it up years ago. The Pinto's death rate from rear-end collisions was lower than the average for that class of car. Ford's "cost comparisons" weren't of Ford vehicles, but of domestic automobiles in general, addressed rollovers as opposed to rear-end collisions, and didn't run estimates of tort liabilities.

In college, I was taught about the "Pinto Memo," the smoking gun that made the wild claims that you are referencing. Sociology professors repeated those claims. Other professors had us actually delve into the document itself.

So, thanks for urging me to look into the matter, but not thanks. I already did, and much more in-depth than you, apparently.

Post the link. I recall that it would have cost Ford less than $50 per vehicle to correct the problem at the factory. Instead, it cost them millions after all of the horrible accidents. Ford calculated the costs to pay claims to be less than fixing the cars, hoping that they wouldn't get discovered. Ford knew the Pinto tanks were defective, and extensively crash-tested them in secret, verifying the problem was real and not an anomaly. The study you reference was part of the memo, so you're massaging the story to fit your narrative. It seems obvious that Ford executives were meant to read between the lines instead of delivering a "smoking gun" directive that fingered the Pinto specifically.

This was in every large newspaper, and the Grimshaw case was a huge award for the day.

Anyway, good deflection, but now back to Boris and Vladimir driving for 2 days straight over at Ground. When will Ground have it's "Orland"? Hopefully, never, but they need to be stopped before the inevitable occurs.

 

[overflowed]

Looked it up years ago. The Pinto's death rate from rear-end collisions was lower than the average for that class of car. Ford's "cost comparisons" weren't of Ford vehicles, but of domestic automobiles in general, addressed rollovers as opposed to rear-end collisions, and didn't run estimates of tort liabilities.

In college, I was taught about the "Pinto Memo," the smoking gun that made the wild claims that you are referencing. Sociology professors repeated those claims. Other professors had us actually delve into the document itself.

So, thanks for urging me to look into the matter, but not thanks. I already did, and much more in-depth than you, apparently.

You must be ancient if you studied the "Pinto Memo."

 

[bacha29]

If the rash of wrecks involving Ground trucks for the most part should have a lot of Ground contractors wondering where they are going to get insurance in the future and at what price? Important consideration given the current downward pressure on settlements.