Nick from NY, I wish I could say I was joking, but I'm not. Yes we routinely drive Uhauls. I just finished driving a 14footer for 3 weeks while my van had the entire rear end rebuilt. I named him Fred, in honor of the esteemed czar of cheap and unsafe package delivery. I was sad to see Fred go, because he actually ran and had a working radio and air conditioning. And Fred's rear door didn't smack me in the shins every time I opened it. We have 3 drivers and 3 vans, all with over 250k miles. No spare vans, no spare parts. All of the above shady practices do indeed happen. In fact, those are just the ones falling into the gray area. There are a few worse things I did not mention that have no bearing on my story, things that get people fired even at a place like FDXground. I'll admit, my terminal is small, very remote, and has little oversight... so it's probably as bad as terminals get.
I am lucky and I think have found some other lucrative employment. I hope FedEx Ground gets examined by the DOT the way the IRS is getting examined by the House. I hope Fred S gets his throne relinquished along with all of his lackeys. I then hope UPS and Express come in and split Ground right down the middle and each take half. I then hope to see all of the good Ground drivers offered a spot making a wage high enough to support a family with food not consisting of boloney and ramen noodles. The icing on the cake would be to scrape all the green vinyl lettering off of all the vans, gather all the pee bottles from all of the vans, along with the thousands of vision stickers that accumulate in the back of each truck, and melt them all into a giant green, vomit colored bow to send to Fred at his tennessee mansion.
Express ain't perfect, along with UPS I'm sure.... but I am a physics major in college and I can definitely say that in the world of math...
a job providing a living wage, benefits, and some time off here and there > (is greater than) the current Ground model. Peace!
