Quote:
Originally Posted by Merami fan
Express and Ground are indeed different companies. They pretty much operate entirely separately from each other. For logistics on the scale that companies like FedEx deal with, there will be some seemingly questionable routes. The goals are cost cutting (reducing or killing low volume routes) and overall efficiency (hubs). It might seem strange to see a package travel "away" from the destination, but that just means it's faster than waiting for trailers to fill up or cheaper than having a dedicated route that sees low volume. The path that your singular package takes is a drop in the ocean of millions of packages that they are moving, and therefore is basically irrelevant.
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Sure, if it were the only package traveling such a short distance that would make sense. But in reality, there are many dozens, if not hundreds of packages traveling from one county to the next every day. These are counties where millions of people live and work, not obscure rural locations. So it would take a fair amount of logistical rationalization to justify putting all those packages on a plane to travel 1,000 miles to Memphis and another 1,000 miles back, increasing chances for delays, damage or losses because of the timing of shipments, weather problems in Memphis or sorting / extra handling. Killing off inefficient routes makes sense, but there is cost associated with moving packages extra distances and handling them at extra stops. If their algorithms tell them they are maximizing profit, good for them, but I doubt they don't have room for efficiency improvements, particularly with the increased volumes over the past 9-12 mos. FedEx and UPS both seem to continue to struggle with the increased volumes, which was understandable initially, but as more time passes, it is less so.