I like Middle Class Jobs Destroyer Smith personally....
Yes, but he's a Job Creator, so don't be a Commie and criticize him, OK? After all, whatever he says on FOX News is taken like the gospel by the Right Wing faithful.
IsItME and Oat 44 make some great points. Yes, Fred is always going to be extremely wealthy and he has it made, but Express is never going to be the great profit generating machine he envisions. The restructuring is not going to reinvent the wheel because it's going to take more people to get the job done. DRA is not going to live-up to expectations, which means that it might take 1.4 or 1.7 or 2.0 FTEs' to do what
one skilled and proficient FTE did before. Even if that new courier only makes $15 per hour and never gets OT, they will still be relatively inefficient.
Fred is spending huge money on new planes and vehicles, which will take many years to recoup. It's a great idea to replace the 727s' with 757s' and 767s', but that needed to be done a long time ago. All of those new Nissans, Econolines, and Sprinters replaced W700s' that still had a lot of life in them in most cases. It's pretty clear how Fred intends to pay for all of this, and that's by cutting labor costs, the way he's always done it. On other words,
we will be making the sacrifices that bring Express up-to-date, even though it was poor management that kept the company from keeping-up with the times and the competition.
We keep hearing that Express volumes are flat and/or declining. So where are the revenue increases going to come from? Yes, a more fuel-efficient fleet will save money, but they are still several years out from eliminating the 727, so what is going to fill those new planes? Since few care about customer service or Sales Leads, there isn't likely to be much growth in the overnight sector. FedEx isn't providing the level of service big-time shippers demand, and the new breed of courier isn't likely to provide it. The only way to truly increase service is to throw more PT DRA couriers at the problem until they get everything off on time, which negates all of those supposed savings anyway. DRA will only work if you have dedicated delivery couriers and dedicated pickup couriers, which means a basically PT workforce. Talk to your local dispatcher if you don't believe this statement. DRA is a disaster for the PU side of operations because it doesn't take pickups into account...only deliveries. Dispatchers are pulling their hair out trying to work around this, but it's an inherent fatal flaw in the DRA system. More inefficiency.
I know R1a and others think that DRA will make most of us redundant, but so far that isn't being proved. What
is concrete right now is the fact that Fred is spending a ton of money when he is supposed to be
saving it. Long-term, savings will be realized, but Wall Street doesn't think long-term. They want results right now, and they aren't going to be happening IMO.
I foresee a new Express with fuel-efficient planes and right-sized vehicles that are going to be running around half-full. That won't be very profitable, especially when it requires
more hourlies (albeit PTers) to do the job. In other words, the restructuring will be a failure.