In 2013, extreme weather and a shorter holiday shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas left both FedEx and their competitor the United Parcel Service (UPS) scrambling to deliver packages before Christmas morning. While FedEx is terrifyingly efficient at moving all this freight around, shipping companies do have bad years. When there are so many planes that they run out of room, they shut down taxi lanes and park planes there. As the folks in Memphis say: The procrastinator uses Express.Īt FedEx’s dedicated air traffic control tower at Memphis International Airport, three air traffic controllers park planes in a giant puzzle. And while both FedEx Express and FedEx Ground-an entirely separate, parallel organization headquartered in Pittsburgh-get hit hard during the holiday season, Express is uniquely subject to Santa-like time constraints. The company now ships more packages every single day than it did on its heaviest day ten years ago. FedEx, for its part, has delivered record numbers of holiday packages every year for more than a decade. online sales have increased by more than 14 percent every year since 2016, and are slated to do so again this winter. According to a report released November 1 by Adobe Analytics, U.S. Unfortunately, fulfilling that promise gets more difficult every year. “Our customers, when they don’t get their thing at 10:30 in the morning, they don’t wanna hear- well the winds were bad in Memphis so we had to land the other way and it added ten minutes.”

“The scarcest commodity for us is time,” says Kirkeminde. Pulling this off requires every resource the company can get its hands on, and some it can’t. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play It’s almost like a carrier deck or something.” “Especially because, if you look out there, they’re using two other runways, and they’re landing just like they are on this one on those. Kirkeminde grew up about a six-hour drive from here, in Knoxville, with a quick stint in Central Florida that did nothing to dull his Jack Daniels, Dollywood, you-want-that-barbecue-wet-or-dry? accent. I’ve heard that number thrown out there, but it’s quicker than that,” says Walter Kirkeminde, a senior manager at FedEx’s Memphis World Hub. As they land (and land and land), the rush of their reverse thrusters crashes over us like waves. A long line of airplanes approaches out of the black highways of the night sky, the lights of each plane fading in like a radio signal, dot after dash after dot.

Most recently, it was announced Bill Cawein, global technology & integration manager at FedEx Express, will outline the company’s global plans to decarbonize through fleeting zero tailpipe emissions vehicles (ZEV) and other strategies at the 2022 Fleet Forward Conference.It’s 27 degrees Fahrenheit at the Memphis International Airport, and the poles that hold up the red landing lights at the end of runway 927 glitter with frost. This isn't the first time Work Truck has covered recent FedEx announcements.įedEx Express teamed up with California Bay Area-based Elroy Air earlier this year to test Elroy Air’s Chaparral autonomous air cargo system within the company’s middle-mile logistics operations.įedEx also received its first 150 electric delivery vehicles from BrightDrop in June. According to FedEx, this marked a critical milestone as the company plans to transform its entire parcel pickup and delivery (PUD) fleet to all-electric, zero-tailpipe emissions by 2040. The zero-emissions, battery-powered delivery robot weighs 450 lbs. According to FedEx, Roxo was originally planned to operate on sidewalks, bike lanes, and roadsides, and was designed to be used in a three-to-five mile radius of a retailer’s location. Roxo also used Deka’s iBot electric wheelchair base.

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