Looking for some insight on purchasing and running a ground route
- Thread starter FdxExp4217
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It will be fine
Well-Known Member
They haven't for about 5 years. They don't make any deductions from settlement anymore.
Did you word that correctly?
It will be fine
Well-Known Member
I think he means FedEx self insuring somehow makes us employees. I'm not sure why he's trying to invent new arguments for employees status. This one is obviously incorrect or it would have been mentioned in any of the successful lawsuits.
It will be fine
Well-Known Member
Sure, but the fact that FedEx insures the vehicles that operate under their authority as required by the DOT, was not an issue that weighed on the classification question.
That isn't a new argument- it is just an expansion of the fact that fedex supplies what is needed for the job. The fact that fedex supplied uniforms, mapping, scanners, decals, etc was a big part of the employee status determination. Even the fact that you operate under fedex DOT authority was part of the reasoning. With fedex adding insurance coverage, it would make it more likely, not less likely that ISP operations are employees. I know that in Oregon at least, it doesn't matter how many people work for you, if fedex controls your operation past a certain point, you are an employee and your drivers are also fedex employees. That exact situation occurred in my case.
In general, if someone is a contractor, he supplies his own insurance and own tools for the job. Then the contractor is judged by final results, not by how he goes about it.
Don't look now, but you just made the argument for contractor status. I buy/lease trucks, insurance, lease scanners, buy uniforms provide maintenance...are you sure I'm an employee? Fedex didn't "add insurance". They have always provided the indemnity insurance.
As for "judged by final results", nobody dictates what order deliveries are made. Gotten a lot of flack for it from some customers who want to encourage early every day. I suggest they have everything shipped express and at the next board meeting decide whether the increased cost is worth it.
UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)
Well-Known Member
ROADS does not have a delivery order listing (DOL)?
We don't have ROADS. HD has something similar that veteran drivers tend to ignore. When I drive an HD route, I use the manifest portion and little else.
If the issues you mention here don't get you it will be the way "your employees" are paid. I know, I know, you and iwbf do it by the book., but I know for FACT that almost all the "contractors" around hear are not. When audited they just make up the hours and rate of pay so it fits. Really, how long do you think it will last!
Do you supply your own scanner, or did you get it from fedex?????? Same with uniforms. Federal court stated unequivically that fedex intentionall designed the contract to make it a close call, and it is all the supporting documentation and extra-contractual actions that made it clear that fedex was attempting to skirt the laws. And you had to get fedex approval for your truck. All of those were used in deciding employee status even for multi route owners. As a named plaintiff, I both supplied documentation and was privy to all the court documents and evidence.
About the only freedom you have, as noted by the federal judges, is the right to decide what order to make deliveries in, and what route to follow, and even those within limitations fedex sets. Fedex has changed very little realistically other than the REQUIREMENT that an independent contractor have multiple employees and multiple vehicles. But as already stated, having employees and/or multiple routes makes no difference in many states.
20 years+ and counting. People just want a job, especially when we run into another recession. Shouldn't be to long away.
Employee rights are not something to mess with.
Now this isn't going to happen tomorrow or the next day but some day the flagrant and pervasive pattern of contract and labor law violations will finds it's way to a federal grand jury. It's only a matter of time and when it does you can rest assured that X will not come to the defense of contractors because that's just not their way of doing business. They will be too preoccupied with their own legal battles to worry about some little contractor.
But if I am an employee, how can I mess with employee rights?
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