Domestically, most of the first flights on any given business week are Monday night inbounds to the hubs. This is because there isn't any service on Sundays and nothing new enters the system until the packages dropped off all day Monday. So, having a bunch of MEM or IND based pilots ready to fly out of the domiciles doesn't help when the packages are at all the out bases ready to come in for the sort Monday night.

Long story short - sorry. FedEx needs pilots in place Monday night at the out stations to fly inbound. So, they deadhead them from their domicile to the outstation Monday morning or maybe Sunday afternoon. They layover and are ready to fly Monday night with the inbound freight to start their week.

So, a deadhead line allows a commuting pilot to get paid to use a commercial flight from their home town to the out station on their trip rather than commute on their own time to their domicile. The scheduled DH ticket from domicile can be cancelled and the $$ used for the ticket the pilot actually needs (as well as other travel expenses if there is extra). Best case scenario is the pilot lives in the city he's supposed to DH to and stays home until it's time to drive to the airport and operate out.

Some trips have the same arrangement at the end as well, since the last flights of the week are typically outbound. These types of lines are very desirable for commuters for obvious reasons.