FedEx delivers operation to New Haven facility
FedEx Home Delivery has outgrown its facility on the north side of Fort Wayne and plans to relocate to the FedEx Ground facility in New Haven that was built three years ago.
The Memphis, Tenn.-based package delivery giant planned to start construction early this month on a 15,000-square-foot expansion of the 55,000-square-foot FedEx Ground facility. Executives expect the new location to be operational in August.
“Because the home-delivery and ground operations are very intertwined logistically, it makes sense to have them in the same location,” said Andy Govrik, senior manager for the FedEx Ground facility at 2742 Wayne Haven St. in New Haven. “We get our packages from the same location. It simplifies things to have them delivered to one location.”
The Fort Wayne area’s FedEx Ground operation completed construction of the Wayne Haven Street facility in the fall of 2003. It moved there from a 6,000-square-foot facility at 5801 Industrial Road.
At the time of the relocation, the company said its $3.5-million investment in the new facility would result in the creation of 20 new positions.
Today at the facility, “we have roughly 60 employees and 20 independent contractors. Those independent contractors have roughly another 20 drivers,” Govrik said. “Our dock is expanding and our offices are going to expand, as well. The expansion is basically due to home delivery.”
FedEx Home Delivery was launched nationwide in March 2000, covering about half the U.S. population with 67 terminals. It opened a facility in Fort Wayne by February the following year, along with 84 other home-delivery facilities. The company was able to provide service to the entire U.S. by September 2002.
In Fort Wayne, the residential-only delivery service operates in an 11,000-square-foot location on Industrial Road; the move to New Haven will provide it with 27 percent more space.
No estimate was available on the cost of the expansion.
“When we opened the FedEx Home Delivery facility in Fort Wayne, we had just two contractors and one temporary driver,” said spokeswoman Allison Sobczak. “Today, the FedEx Home Delivery facility has a work force of 25 contractors and drivers and 13 part- and full-time employees.”
The relocation to New Haven is part of a nationwide expansion for FedEx Home Delivery, she said.
The company is looking at adding nine new hubs and expanding 37 existing hubs, as well as relocating or expanding close to 300 local facilities, such as the one serving the Fort Wayne area.
Currently, FedEx Home Delivery operates a network of more than 500 distribution hubs and local terminals throughout the United States and Canada.
Using a hub-and-spoke system, “FedEx Ground operates a separate network from our sister companies, FedEx Express and FedEx Freight,” Sobczak said.
“Traditionally, packages move between hubs. Hubs then transport packages to a local facility, such as Fort Wayne, for delivery to the recipient. The Fort Wayne facility receives packages from the Toledo hub.
“FedEx Ground has experienced tremendous growth in the past few years,” she said. “The nationwide network expansion will give us more capacity to handle the increasing package volume.”
Bloomberg reported late last month FedEx Corp. has been growing more rapidly in U.S. ground shipping than its larger rival, United Parcel Service.
FedEx Ground volume rose 12 percent in the most recent quarter, while UPS gained 3.6 percent, according to analyst Donald Broughton of A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St. Louis.
Atlanta-based UPS, in an effort to protect its lead in the $27 billion U.S. ground delivery market, just unveiled a Web-based service enabling customers to reroute packages up to the moment of delivery. FedEx customers can redirect shipments by phone.
