FedEx Ground announces third hub expansion site
FedEx Ground announced its third hub expansion site, promising Memphis will be next. (8/29/2003)
By Thanksgiving, FedEx Ground will announce the location of its Memphis hub, president and CEO Dan Sullivan said. It is the last hub FedEx plans to build by 2005.
Six more hubs are slated to be up by 2009, Sullivan said, in an expansion Pittsburgh-based FedEx Ground expects to will cost $1 billion.
The buzz here is where FedEx will locate.
Its priorities are interstate access, proximity to customers and access to a strong employee base.
Real estate sources say FedEx is most interested in the DeSoto Distribution Center near Olive Branch, where Germantown Road Extended and Lamar intersect.
This week, FedEx announced the purchase of 96 acres in rural northern Kentucky for a hub that will serve the Cincinnati area.
In mid-July, it bought 115 acres in a Hagerstown, Md., business park, well outside the urban centers.
“With the hub expansion, we will nearly double our capacity” to 4.8 million packages a day, Sullivan said.
In the past year, FedEx Ground gained 2.5 percent of market share, giving it 15 to or 16 percent against giant UPS, which has more than 60 percent, FedEx spokesman Perry Colosimo said.
At full capacity, the hub will process up to 45,000 packages an hour and employ more than 1,000 workers.
