![]() 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. 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. ![]()
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