Bad Moon Rising

[Cactus]

As long as Ground can continue to keep X a lower cost operator than USPS and UPS not much is going to change outside of more freight being shifted to it and more letters to correct being sent to contractors with shorter time lines being given to correct whatever is grinding Fat Freddy's grits .

Fred will never learn that there’s a real cost to keep a union from forming. Many headaches too.

His logic has always been that he’s entitled to free lunches.

 

[Cactus]

That's now considered an acceptable consequence.

And a big double standard.

 

[Cactus]

First released in 1969, so 50 years old.
I wish that was how old I am.
"Old" is relative.

The joke about a bathroom on the right is old.

The song stays fresh forever.

CCR still is one the best ever American bands.

 

[59 Dano]

Not always. Only in recent years did they report after hours. They had been releasing earnings reports in the AM prior to the opening bell....but that was when times were good.
BTW I see that Bezos has signed the lease on 10 737-800's from a private equity group called Sun Country. Don't be surprised that sometime between now and the end of next year he buys an airline.

Bezos is renting from a budget airline. Good for him. Let me know when he actually makes the commitment.

 

[59 Dano]

You wouldn’t understand.

Hopefully with the 40% loss in profit, your job will be going by the wayside. (It’s a dead-wood position anyway Dirwood.)

You can go crawling back to the company you worked at before. If they won’t take you, McDonald’s is hiring.

You wear the fundamental attribution error like a crown.

 

[59 Dano]

I had an issue with a Ground package which was signature required. The driver forged my signature

Not to take his side, but not all package recipients know how to write.

 

[Cactus]

Not to take his side, but not all package recipients know how to write.

So in other words you just ASSume?

Wow, every courier should have you with so you can do the customer's thinking for them.

You're an imbecile.

 

[Cactus]

You wear the fundamental attribution error like a crown.

Hey when you get that gig at McDonald's they can introduce the new McDano.

A big load of crap between two stale buns.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

Bezos is renting from a budget airline. Good for him. Let me know when he actually makes the commitment.

ABX is not a budget airline.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

Not to take his side, but not all package recipients know how to write.

I had a customer who used to receive COD's that did not know to write a check. He would sign it and we would fill out the rest, showing it to him before we left.

 

[bacha29]

Bezos is renting from a budget airline. Good for him. Let me know when he actually makes the commitment.

He does have warrants to buy a minority stake in Atlas Air and ATSG. Now being that you're so high in Fedex and part of your job is to keep tabs on the latest moves competitors are making there's no reason for you not to know this.
Yes, it is just a warrants position a kind of a stick your toe in the water move but it is an important first step.

 

[dmac1]

He went on to say that X has lost the E-Commerce War.
If that's the case then they need only to look at how Ground is structured to plainly see that it's being called upon to operate in a fashion it was never designed for. There is where they'll find the reason why it lost.

HD was created for the e-commerce boom they saw coming, but they quickly found they weren't ready for it. Originally set up as a separate part of ground, it was intended for residential delivery with the smaller, more nimble, and easier to park vehicles. I thought it was a great idea, but Fedex didn't want to spend the dough needed to make it work right, and within the first few months abandoned the idea of keeping residential and business deliveries separate. Now they are stuck with a lot more vehicles doing pickups from businesses, meaning that maybe instead of 25 vehicles returning from delivering with pickups to be handled, there may be 30, or 40, or more. And because most trucks need to now be larger because they MIGHT need to deliver larger items, the actual size of the terminal needs to be bigger to handle bigger average vehicles, or stagger terminal time. Each of the issues may seem like small issues, but there is a phrase- death by 1000 cuts- that someone saw 20 yrs ago as a reason to start HD. If all small residential packages from ground had been transferred to HD, and all business deliveries transferred to ground, both would have benefited. I would say that residential service suffers more from having integrated business and home deliveries, but those bigger ground vehicles driving out into residential areas cost more to operate when a smaller vehicle could have done it. Now both need larger, more expensive, less efficient vehicles to deliver tiny packages. Seeing a big ground van stop in front of my house to drop off a small box of screws from Amazon makes me laugh at just how ridiculous it is that I can get a huge truck to deliver something so tiny and still pay less than buying it locally and driving a few miles in my subcompact car.

 

[dmac1]

The federal budget is THOUSANDS of pages long. I would accuse you of cherry picking specific expenditures for the purpose of dramatic effect, but you're probably not smart enough for that.

If you were, you'd suggest cutting the billions of dollars spend on managing over 700,000 empty buildings.

I would suggest that having all social services under one department or maybe a couple would make sense. Maybe combine Medicare, medicaid, and VA health services, and the CDC, and combine VA housing with FHA and Fannies Mae and Mac, and maybe even public housing assistance, AFDC, SNAP, and the federal utility assistance programs could all be under one head. Repeating management of similar programs multiple times at multiple agencies that provide similar services could save money without cutting service to those using the programs.

 

[dmac1]

Correct. As of today there is no guarantee that a package will get to its destination by Christmas.

The guarantee was worthless anyway. Only the shipper could collect, not the customer who bought the item for a gift for someone. Every year I was at fedex, tens of thousands of packages were delayed, with stuff coming in for at least a couple weeks from wherever it had been sitting

 

[dmac1]

Not to take his side, but not all package recipients know how to write.

I wonder how many ground drivers know how to write. Even speaking english or understanding it isn't a requirement if they have a pulse and a fairly clean record.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

I wonder how many ground drivers know how to write. Even speaking english or understanding it isn't a requirement if they have a pulse and a fairly clean record.

Do you have both a pulse and "fairly" clean record?

 

[MrFedEx]

Bezos is renting from a budget airline. Good for him. Let me know when he actually makes the commitment.

Bezos is owning Smith right now. Amazon has essentially "borrowed" Fred's Ground model and turned it against him. Plus, Amazon has thousands of people delivering in personal vehicles.

Renting from a budget airline? If that's what you want to call it, that's pretty smart. No commitment to ownership when the market slows, and the freedom to negotiate with other providers if the cost gets too high.

I'm no big fan of Bezos, because he's really just another Smith in Democratic clothing. He's cheap, anti-union, and viciously competitive, and he has Fredward on the ropes. Nobody wants to "pay" for FedEx delivery when they can get it "free" through Amazon Prime. Bezos is making his money on the product, not the delivery, and he's rapidly removing UPS, FedEx, and the USPS from the equation, thereby further controlling the narrative and the delivery industry paradigm, which is essentially being rewritten.

Fred has a fleet of new Boeings he has to fill or lose his butt. Bezos leases his FLEET and has the flexibility to add or subtract aircraft or vehicles at will. Smart, and a strategy Smith cannot compete with long-term.

Better start looking for another job. You're probably qualified to work at WalMart, but not Amazon because you're a 10-watt bulb. McDonald's manager?

 

[59 Dano]

ABX is not a budget airline.

Sun Country is a budget airline. ABX is less than that.

Amazon is already having issues with the pay and conditions that its contracted pilots are facing. This doesn't help.

 

[59 Dano]

He does have warrants to buy a minority stake in Atlas Air and ATSG. Now being that you're so high in Fedex and part of your job is to keep tabs on the latest moves competitors are making there's no reason for you not to know this.
Yes, it is just a warrants position a kind of a stick your toe in the water move but it is an important first step.

Like I said, when Bezos makes that commitment, let us know.

 

[MrFedEx]

Like I said, when Bezos makes that commitment, let us know.

Bezos is smart not to make that commitment. By leasing, he isn't bound to the high costs of operating half-empty airplanes or selling freight at cut rates to fill them. His fleet is flexible and Fred's is not. Neither is the UPS fleet. Ownership means you eat it when you can't fill your planes.

Bezos will eventually be leasing even more aircraft and increasing his Ground-based vehicle delivery fleet. This is bad news for Uncle Fred, who doesn't have that flexibility and finesse.