" The Times They Are A Changing"

bacha29

Well-Known Member
My information is from and about this general area, but what I've heard is that this area isn't having that kind of problem. At least not on any significant scale. It's a bigger issue among some of the smaller contractors. Some say it's an issue with FedEx, some say it's a problem with the labor market, some say it's an issue with the general business climate post-COVID. There are between 5000 and 6000 contractors, so about a quarter of them are concerned.



The general trend seems to be toward larger contractors who are better equipped to handle whatever problems arise. This area continues to see significant growth and has been dominated by larger carriers, so maybe that explains a lot of it.

For everyone who wants out because it's no longer worth it to them, there's someone else who sees it as a great opportunity.
They will never be allowed to get large enough to where they have real power within the opco. Fat Raj will always remain the dominant power . At least to the point where he will always get along just fine without any single contractor regardless of their scale of operation.
The American economy on the other hand is 70% consumer spending. GDP is really going to struggle to keep from falling into recession territory. If there is one it perhaps it could serve as the far bigger game changer.
 

Questions Needed Answered

Well-Known Member
FedEx went from a perennial top 5 on Forbes top 100 companies to work for list to 100th place on the latest one. Reading these threads makes me think the company is sinking. Couldn't happen to nicer people. Just wish the frontline employees didn't have to suffer with them.

This is one of the reasons why. You get what you pay for. The pay at FedEx simply isn't keeping up enough to draw the talent they want.

Put yourself in the shoes of some 23 year old fresh out of the service or college and look at the average price of houses sold in the U.S. (regardless of market; here's a market specific link for those who'd attempt to nit pick the argument Q1 2022, Quarterly New One-Family Home Sales by Price and Financing: Median and Average Sales Price of Houses Sold by Region | FRED | St. Louis Fed). That ~$22 to $25 an hour with minimal step increases (given the recent history of non existent increases) isn't going to cut it.

Even the best planning in the world can't save the company if the company isn't willing to pay competitive wages.
 

Slowturtle

Active Member

This is one of the reasons why. You get what you pay for. The pay at FedEx simply isn't keeping up enough to draw the talent they want.

Put yourself in the shoes of some 23 year old fresh out of the service or college and look at the average price of houses sold in the U.S. (regardless of market; here's a market specific link for those who'd attempt to nit pick the argument Q1 2022, Quarterly New One-Family Home Sales by Price and Financing: Median and Average Sales Price of Houses Sold by Region | FRED | St. Louis Fed). That ~$22 to $25 an hour with minimal step increases (given the recent history of non existent increases) isn't going to cut it.

Even the best planning in the world can't save the company if the company isn't willing to pay competitive wages.
Yep but they can afford a $5 billion stock (as of December 2021) purchase buyback????????? This does nothing the employee… unless you own shares and at $200+ per share what average Joe can afford very many except the elite. Green greed greed… really disgusting
 

Questions Needed Answered

Well-Known Member
unless you own shares and at $200+ per share what average Joe can afford very many except the elite.
Although I've not been with the company long enough to have seen very much, I've seen enough that I don't have confidence in it to buy at the $200+ level.


An ~8 percent return over the last 5 years indicates that it's not the darling that some portrait it to be either.


Especially considering UPS is up ~69% over the same time period.

In my opinion FedEx stock price is very overvalued so to do a buyback at this point is throwing good money after bad.
 
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10-27

Well-Known Member

This is one of the reasons why. You get what you pay for. The pay at FedEx simply isn't keeping up enough to draw the talent they want.

Put yourself in the shoes of some 23 year old fresh out of the service or college and look at the average price of houses sold in the U.S. (regardless of market; here's a market specific link for those who'd attempt to nit pick the argument Q1 2022, Quarterly New One-Family Home Sales by Price and Financing: Median and Average Sales Price of Houses Sold by Region | FRED | St. Louis Fed). That ~$22 to $25 an hour with minimal step increases (given the recent history of non existent increases) isn't going to cut it.

Even the best planning in the world can't save the company if the company isn't willing to pay competitive wages.
It appears FedEx seems to think a revolving door of low paid workers is the most profitable business plan moving forward. They're not interested in competitive wages or benefits. I feel this will only get worse.
 

59 Dano

I just want to make friends!
They will never be allowed to get large enough to where they have real power within the opco. Fat Raj will always remain the dominant power . At least to the point where he will always get along just fine without any single contractor regardless of their scale of operation.

As it should be. No one puzzle piece of that type should be so important that can overtly influence success or failure.
 

59 Dano

I just want to make friends!
Put yourself in the shoes of some 23 year old fresh out of the service or college and look at the average price of houses sold in the U.S. (regardless of market; here's a market specific link for those who'd attempt to nit pick the argument Q1 2022, Quarterly New One-Family Home Sales by Price and Financing: Median and Average Sales Price of Houses Sold by Region | FRED | St. Louis Fed). That ~$22 to $25 an hour with minimal step increases (given the recent history of non existent increases) isn't going to cut it.

LOL. The average age of the first time home buyer is 30 or higher. I don't know what a 23 year-old college grad and house prices have to do with one another.
 

Questions Needed Answered

Well-Known Member
LOL. The average age of the first time home buyer is 30 or higher. I don't know what a 23 year-old college grad and house prices have to do with one another.
If you don't understand the correlation between housing prices and average wages then it's clear you're not a college graduate but you *are* an excellent example of what talent the quoted wages will draw. I don't recall if you served or not.

More specifically to the "point" you attempted to make, a 30 year old (or older) with those same qualifiers (college graduate or prior service) would see the quoted wages as even less desirable given that they've probably already accumulated work history.

I normally wouldn't even respond to such low hanging fruit, but your attempt at being a smart a** and the condescension (which seems to be thematic in your posts) gave me a reason.
 
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Questions Needed Answered

Well-Known Member
It appears FedEx seems to think a revolving door of low paid workers is the most profitable business plan moving forward. They're not interested in competitive wages or benefits. I feel this will only get worse.
And the performance of the stock indicates the market *doesn't* see it as profitable. Again, a simple comparison between the two companies, UPS and FedEx, stock price is telling; the wages are also as dissimilar as the stock returns.

An approximate 8 percent return over the last 5 years (here's the link again fedex stock price - Google Search) is abysmal.

Amazon can get away with the business model of constantly revolving cheap labor because they have other, more profitable, portions of the company namely Amazon Web Services. In fact, virtually every company that uses the model of a constantly revolving door of cheap labor has some other product to offer the market whereas FedEx has nothing to offer other than an aging fleet of airplanes and vehicles and ... the labor they sell to the public; the labor *is* their product.
 
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It will be fine

Well-Known Member
As it should be. No one puzzle piece of that type should be so important that can overtly influence success or failure.
The issue that I see currently is contractors have to have a fairly large scale to support all the additional admin work they’ve been piling on us the last few years. The only way to get that scale is operating in multiple terminals. So they get huge contractors that have 20ish trucks in every terminal around a city. When those guys struggle or fail it causes a big problem. The smaller contractors and contingency teams can only cover so much.
The big guys also have less of an issue walking away from contracts that aren’t profitable.

Top brass doesn’t actually know what they want or how to get there. There’s too much overhead for small contractors and too much risk with big ones. There is no plan.
 

bacha29

Well-Known Member
The issue that I see currently is contractors have to have a fairly large scale to support all the additional admin work they’ve been piling on us the last few years. The only way to get that scale is operating in multiple terminals. So they get huge contractors that have 20ish trucks in every terminal around a city. When those guys struggle or fail it causes a big problem. The smaller contractors and contingency teams can only cover so much.
The big guys also have less of an issue walking away from contracts that aren’t profitable.

Top brass doesn’t actually know what they want or how to get there. There’s too much overhead for small contractors and too much risk with big ones. There is no plan.
Reaffirms what I've been saying all along....It's an impossible situation. They won't cede enough power and autonomy to big contractors to allow them to operate freely enough to meet all of the ever increasing demands, dictates and mandates. At the same time however after spending years forcing out the small contractors they now expect the few who remain to step in and cover the very areas that drove the big contractor into insolvency. The entire sad, sorry predicament falls in somewhere between Catch 22 and Alanis Morissette Syndrome (Isn't it Ironic?)

Two or three years ago speculative investors were out there gobbling up as many contracts as they could get their hands on. Today Fat Raj has them exactly where he wants them.....stuck in an impossible situation with no favorable way out while margins continue to become ever more compressed.
 

Fred's Myth

Nonhyphenated American
And the performance of the stock indicates the market *doesn't* see it as profitable. Again, a simple comparison between the two companies, UPS and FedEx, stock price is telling; the wages are also as dissimilar as the stock returns.

An approximate 8 percent return over the last 5 years (here's the link again fedex stock price - Google Search) is abysmal.

Amazon can get away with the business model of constantly revolving cheap labor because they have other, more profitable, portions of the company namely Amazon Web Services. In fact, virtually every company that uses the model of a constantly revolving door of cheap labor has some other product to offer the market whereas FedEx has nothing to offer other than an aging fleet of airplanes and vehicles and ... the labor they sell to the public; the labor *is* their product.
This is because FedEx management consists of UPS cast-offs and greenhorn managers who are incapable of honestly dealing with their labor pool. Try researching who sits on the BoD, and how much stock they hold. That will inform you as to where their loyalties lie.
 

Questions Needed Answered

Well-Known Member
This is because FedEx management consists of UPS cast-offs and greenhorn managers who are incapable of honestly dealing with their labor pool. Try researching who sits on the BoD, and how much stock they hold. That will inform you as to where their loyalties lie.
Then they're cutting their nose off to spite their face because, for the third time, the stock performance flat out sucks. Unless I'm misreading and you're implying that the board doesn't hold much stock (a la Twitter), then in that case the piss poor decisions still don't make sense because where will the members land if FedEx goes belly up?
 

59 Dano

I just want to make friends!
If you don't understand the correlation between housing prices and average wages then it's clear you're not a college graduate but you *are* an excellent example of what talent the quoted wages will draw. I don't recall if you served or not.

More specifically to the "point" you attempted to make, a 30 year old (or older) with those same qualifiers (college graduate or prior service) would see the quoted wages as even less desirable given that they've probably already accumulated work history.

I normally wouldn't even respond to such low hanging fruit, but your attempt at being a smart a** and the condescension (which seems to be thematic in your posts) gave me a reason.
Dude you said to put one's self in the shoes of a 23 year old college grad and then tried to tie it in to housing prices. But carry on, bacha needs some company.
 

Questions Needed Answered

Well-Known Member
Dude you said to put one's self in the shoes of a 23 year old college grad and then tried to tie it in to housing prices. But carry on, bacha needs some company.
And I also made it clear that you cannot put yourself in a college grad's shoes (since your lack of basic logic is evident). If you're attempting to argue that housing prices and wages are not tied together then you're even more willfully dense than I gave you credit for.

The argument was that wages at FedEx are not competitive; no one is buying a ~$400k house on $50k a year. You attempted to argue some point (I'm not sure what) that the average age of the first time home buyer was not 23, in fact it was 30 or higher. Is that supposed to be some kind of argument that the wages at FedEx *are* competitive? If they're not attractive to someone freshly entering into the workforce then why in the world would they be attractive to someone with more work history? Your argument *is* no argument and it's a 💩 post that seems to be typical behavior of yours.

Here you go, I saved you the trouble of doing a search (not that you'll be bothered to read it, likely you'll instead go on to attempt some weak trolling elsewhere) are housing prices and wages correlated - Google Search

Furthermore I'm not your "dude" and I find the majority of your postings antagonistic and largely unproductive. As such I'll not be responding to you further. Go "make friends" with someone else.
 

Aquaman

Well-Known Member
It appears FedEx seems to think a revolving door of low paid workers is the most profitable business plan moving forward. They're not interested in competitive wages or benefits. I feel this will only get worse.
It’s a mess of a company. They don’t really have the staffing to try much that will work at this point. They’ve seemed to surrender to the Amazon model of no uniforms and untrained workers. They’re not going to compete with UPS because they figure UPS will follow suit eventually or suffer. The shipping/delivery service has become a speed & consistency game. Nothing else matters. Customers don’t care about how much tracking information you give them. They don’t care about expensive early commit times. They don’t care what the driver or truck look like…. They care about that package on their porch. If you can consistently do that, the level of service doesn’t matter. Amazon is proving that every day. They seem to be doing fine with untrained workers in sweat pants with an Amazon vest running the package to your door with the truck still running with doors open.
 

10-27

Well-Known Member
It’s a mess of a company. They don’t really have the staffing to try much that will work at this point. They’ve seemed to surrender to the Amazon model of no uniforms and untrained workers. They’re not going to compete with UPS because they figure UPS will follow suit eventually or suffer. The shipping/delivery service has become a speed & consistency game. Nothing else matters. Customers don’t care about how much tracking information you give them. They don’t care about expensive early commit times. They don’t care what the driver or truck look like…. They care about that package on their porch. If you can consistently do that, the level of service doesn’t matter. Amazon is proving that every day. They seem to be doing fine with untrained workers in sweat pants with an Amazon vest running the package to your door with the truck still running with doors open.
Exactly! They have no plans to compete with UPS in terms of pay and benefits. Clearly they like the Amazon model and will continue to move that direction. Bank on it!
 
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