The non-overnight freight arrives at the destination ramps in the early evening the day BEFORE the delivery committment (volume to be delivered Friday arrives at the ramps Thursday evenings). This means that if the trigger is pulled, the Express non-overnight volume shifted over to Ground would arrive the early night before it was due for delivery - in most cases well before midnight at the Ground terminals. This means that the Express volume would be the first volume sorted at the Ground terminals in the AM (no potential delays).
The $64,000 question is how many ramps (within their current service areas) have more than 1 Ground terminal covering the same service area?
If a vast majority of ramps have only one Ground terminal covering the same service area, then it is all a no-brainer - truck the volume over to the Ground terminals and they sort it out without the ramps even opening the containers.
If as I believe, there is a situation of either more than one Ground terminal existing within the service area of each ramp - or overlapping service (one Ground terminal has an existing service area that overlaps two Express ramp service areas), then it gets a bit more complicated. The ramps would have to do a "terminal sort", to break out volume between the different terminals within the ramps existing coverage areas (perfectly "do-able").
However this would require changes to the ASTRA labeling, to enable the handlers to identify which terminal trailer/can was the correct location for the piece. Alternatively...
A possible work around to this would be the expansion of ROADS capability to the ramps. The ROADS systems can very easily be modified to enable each piece that is sorted at the ramps to be scanned, and a ROADS label to be placed on it identifying which Ground terminal trailer it is to be placed in. All that would need to be done is to slap in a network to work with the hand held labelers, then have engineering develop a system that would link package ZIP code to a particular terminal - then generate a label for handlers to visually determine which terminal to sort to. Then scan guns would be set up to give the familiar "beep" if the piece was being handled into the correct location or the triple beep if they grabbed the wrong piece.
Continuing on the speculation...
There is a possible explanation as to why I haven't heard of any decking or lifts being installed at Ground terminals - they won't receive Express air containers (I highly doubt this is the case, just a possible scenario)....
If there are overlapping service areas between Express ramps and Ground terminals (I just can't believe that FedEx had the foresight to make the service areas of Express ramps and Ground terminals correspond perfectly, FedEx isn't that good when it comes to advance planning) - then by necessity, the ramps will have to perform a sort. Instead of sorting out volume to destination Express station, they'd sort out volume to destination Ground terminal.
If this is the case, then all the infrastructure modifications would occur at Express ramps and not Ground terminals.
Back to what I've actually seen of business plans...
From the documents I've seen, the business plan is for Express to sort out the volume at the ramps (using existing infrastructure without significant modification), load the sorted volume into aircraft cargo containers, then truck the containers over to the Ground terminals where they'd unload the volume and run it through their sorts. This would virtually eliminate the need to modify Express facilities, and the only infrastructure changes would be the addition of decking and lifts at the Ground terminals.
Whether the semi drivers moving this volume around would be Express, Ground or contractors wasn't specified. Currently, contract drivers do move Express volume that doesn't go on aircraft (non-overnight volume between markets where the volume can be moved and committment made). Most ramps have contract routes (right now) that use contract carriers to move volume (including heavyweight) between adjoining service areas.
The only real changes to existing Express container movement would be the need to add truck routes to move the emptied air containers from the Ground terminals, to Express stations during the day, to enable the Express stations to load their outbound volume in the evening (they wouldn't be receiving the cans of non--overnight in the AM, just the overnight volume from the ramps as they currently do) - no big deal. So if this were to happen, the Express RTD's would actually benefit, since there would be more work for them in moving cargo containers around.
For the stations, since there wouldn't be any non-overnight volume to sort in the early AM, start times would be pushed back till when the overnight volume starts rolling in. With no non-overnight volume to deliver, routes (using existing structure, no changes envisioned there) would be done between 12 PM and 1 PM. "P1" would be gotten off as is done currently, then SO volume that didn't tagalong with P1 would be delivered. Most route would be back in the stations by 1 PM.
With a later start time in the morning and an earlier return to station time in the early afternoon, the overwhelming majority of Couriers would be on the clock less than 6 hours for a day. You know what that means...