Reading some of these comments is ridiculous .. I am a GROUND driver .. I am NOT an immigrant .. I make roughly $15 an hour .. I get to listen to my radio/mp3 player etc .. I don't have management breathing down my neck .. as long as I follow the rules and provide quality service to my customers, while getting everything delivered in a timely fashion, I'm left alone and have the freedom to do my deliveries in whatever fashion I want (of course, while getting to my business customers in the general time they are accustom to me being there) ..
To me these freedoms are worth more than a few extra bucks an hour I'd make working for UPS or Express ..
Also, my contractor took us all out for a great fancy dinner right before peak began, drinks on him as well .. he's also taken us all out for breakfast a few times during peak to keep morale high .. he has handed out bonuses .. he has done a fine job keeping his drivers happy, providing enough extra help to get us home before supper EVERY night, etc ..
It's my CHOICE to, I guess, be part of this "scam" .. to be "taken advantage of" .. and seeing the stress on the Express drivers' faces this peak, I'll continue to make the same choice and stay where I'm "not appreciated" ..
Great. Where does your insurance coverage come from? Your contractor can afford to buy you a big fancy dinner with free drinks, because you are his cash cow. He skims the cream off the top and leaves you the rest, which is underpaid and completely up Sheet Creek if you get sick. Do you have a family? Where does their insurance come from? It comes from me, and the rest of the taxpayers who subsidize Ground.
Take a close look at what Fred S has created. I've been around long enough to remember RPS, and how those individual contractors struggled to make maybe $25,000 per year net way back when. They'd work 60 hours or more per week for a real wage of something like 4 to 5 dollars per hour after expenses. That looked really good to Fred, so he bought the company.
All Ground did was add some money to the kitty so the contractor did better and could buy multiple routes. They did the same thing on the line-haul end with the truckers, paying the drivers peanuts, but making it worthwhile for the contractor. Even so, Ground routes could be had for practically nothing in the 90's because a lot of people were buying-in, seeing that the profit just wasn't there (except for Fred), and getting-out at a loss.
Fred, in his infinite wisdom, gave the contractors a bigger piece of the pie as Ground expanded, but also increased the degree of corporate control. This is the step where Ground really took-off, as FedEx invested in facilities and really went after UPS market share, which was easy to take as long as cost was the only consideration because Ground service sucked.
As the degree of FedEx control increased, so did efficiency, and so began the myth of the "independent" contractor. Now, Fred ran the show, but kept the contractors fat and happy enough to shut them up. This is where Ground is today, steadily eating away at UPS market share because they pay their drivers about a third of UPS total compensation, and pass-off many major operating costs onto the contractors. UPS can never match Ground on cost, and until they wake-up and challenge the legality of the Ground model, Brown will continue to lose packages at an increasing rate.
The legal problem for Smith will be "degree of control", as I've said many times before here. IMO, FedEx doesn't stand a chance in court once the truth about the way the company is really run is revealed. Ground drivers
should be employees pure and simple, and eventually that will be decided in court. UPS needs to help this process along because their survival depends on it.
