FedEx’s Secret: Empty Jets In the Air

We jumped into a Mercedes taxi in Santiago, Chile, this afternoon and in the back seat flap we found a convenient NY Times news digest waiting for us. Among the day’s news was an item about the “FedEX Economy, evidence that the speed with which American business responds to different crises is what keeps us growing.

“The local crew made a call to a sprawling, low-slung room here at [FedEX’s Memphis] headquarters, where people hunch over computer screens showing weather maps and flight plans, and asked for help from the five empty FedEX jets that roam over the U.S. every night.

David Leonhardt believes that no other company embodies American businesses ability to adapt to calamities like wars, hurricanes, rising interest rates and still grow every year more than this example: FedEX having a fleet of empty jets available to pick up cargo wherever it waits, is why we have ‘micro recessions’ instead of 1929 style crashes.