Well, I got some serious answers and others not so serious. Upstate was correct that UPS makes roughly 10 cents on the dollar. However my question was, how much would you want to make on each dollar of sale in your own company? If you look at other companies such as Apple, Microsoft and other Fortune 500 companies, the profit margin is much larger.
Also, the companies that "give it all back to employees" are not public for profit companies. As a person who goes out and starts a company, you do it probably since you ahve a passion for it. Most people start companies to make money first and foremost. As a few others wrote, once UPS records "profit", we pay the federal govt a hefty Corp tax (about 1/3). We also use the profits left over for dividends to shareowners, we also use it to buy back stock. However, a lot of money goes into buying new package cars, the expansion to Worldport, New computers, New Intl Hubs. We also use it to buy companies such as TNT (hopefully that goes thru). If UPS didn't make a profit, there would be no more package cars, no more trailers, no more planes or air hubs. We need the company to make a profit to be able to buy those items. My point is that it seems so many people look at it and says UPS made a lot of profit, that's not fair, we should make more. I believe you should earn based on what the market pays for that job. FDX pays far less, but they also get a work force that is not as good as ours, and also a work force that does not do as much. However, there overall costs are much lower compared to ours. They have grown faster then us each year for decades now (their overall growth). If this keeps us, their volume will = UPS volume and then we will really be at a disadvantage.
I still look at how the UAW allowed their members to make an extremely good pay rate. However, it was uncompetitive and eventually competitors beat them and the number of UAW employees is far reduced compared to the 70's. The more volume FDX gets, the more Teamster work that is lost to them.
