FedEx Home Delivery Contractors - A Girlfriend's View

My Boyfriend decided to run a FedEx Home Delivery Contractor Route. What started out as an interesting venture is fast becoming a lousy prospect. Thinking about becoming one? Here are some things, good and bad that he tells me that would make me wonder. Hate the service? Possibly it ISN'T the idiot drivers fault. ANY AND ALL COMMENTS ABOUT FED EX Home Delivery Services and Routes ARE MORE THAN WELCOME. Again, this blog expresses my opinions and the opinions of any commenter who posts here.

Friday, December 09, 2005

More of the same

I haven't posted in a while because there really hasn't been all that much to add. We snuck in a long weekend and got married. I've temporarily given up my consulting business to take a full time job so that we can plan his next move and save up for his inevitable unemployment. How can you find work or plan a business when you spend most of your times focusing keeping a route running?

We will be getting rid of this nightmare, the next step is to decide what to do next. Sell the route hopefully with the truck. The problem is there is a confusing issue, where some people "buy" routes, his terminal, when someone decides to leave their route, it doesn't seem like any selling goes on. Its very vague.

Over the past year there have been some good things and mostly bad things that have gone on at FHD.

Good: They instituted the "swing" driver policy, which allows you to "buy" vacation time. A few of the drivers have taken on more temps so the "what is your supplemental driver plan for peak season" became non existent.

Bad: All the BS that always happens - nuff said, read people's comments here. The new announcement is "We are having "mandatory Mondays" during peak season this year". So far they have been light and it really hasn't solved all the problems with package overload that the terminal is having. Guys aren't getting out of there until 10:00am lately with 10 hours+ worth of stops. Ho HO Ho. Happy holidays right?

They tried to convince my husband to hire a "runner" this year to run the packages. When he pointed out that he has no desire to do W-2's they said, "Oh, no, the runner would be a contractor". HUH? As if they aren't pushing the envelope on declaring the "Owner Operators" are contractors, they are trying to define someone who "shows up when you tell them, and does everything you tell them to do all day" a contractor. Any OO that hires one of these "contractors" is seriously running the risk of having the IRS/State Labor division come after them. I imagine that FHD thinks that most "contractors" don't have a brain so they can feed them any line of BS they want.

2 Comments:

At 8:41 PM, Blogger JeffC said...

Hello, I am a "newbie" to Fedexaminer and wish I knew about the site a couple years ago, I started out with FHD as a temp in october 2003, signed a contract a month later for my first route, averaged getting home 10:00pm every night for weeks because I was delivering in 4 counties and average mileage was 300-325 a day, all of this to do 40-55 stops a day (what a fool I was) I now realize looking at these numbers FHD does not have the volume they claim to have, there is no reason a driver should have to drive 300+ miles to do 40 stops and the core zones suck, I am in "rural West Virginia" out of those 40 stops maybe just maybe 10-15 of stops might be on a city street, the others are all out in left field and could be a 20 minute drive between stops. Of course I was talked into "growing my business", so I took on a second route and then a third, with the high cost of maintance, fuel and dealer repairs on 2 Sprinters which contractors were told was the best delivery vehicle on the market at the time, I just about lost my good credit that I had before this adventure, to cover alot of repair costs I had to dip into my personal monies as in personal checkbook, credit cards and little bit of savings I had, this took alot away from my family. I was told by my idiot terminal manager that maintance loans were only availible to ground contractors and not to HD contractors??? Anyways to make a long story short, I have sold all 3 routes (dirt cheap) but I guess I am lucky to leave with anything but what I did get from the routes will all go out to pay off outstanding debt I own from this great thing called "Home Delivery"

 
At 4:27 PM, Blogger rangikumatsumoto said...

Okay This might be a little random but I was on craigslist the other day and then there is a position for a fedex ground delivery driver through a contractor. I email them my resume and she emailed me back asking if I could pass the background check and drug test. I said yes and she had me go fill out the application through fedex. My question is I have another job right now working front desk of the hotel but it doesn't pay very well She said the job will be from 7 am to 430-500 Eat today and I'll get it before taxes about 600 a week It'd be double what I'm getting right now at my job per week . I just wanna know what it be a good idea to take the job I should I say at a job I have now because I'm comfortable with it and I know I have it.

 

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