And from another media source...
FedEx plans to open hub next week
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
By
Richard M. Barron
Staff Writer
Accompanying Photos
File photo (News & Record)
Photo Caption: A FedEx plane departs at Piedmont Triad International Airport.
In less than a week, FedEx will take the wraps off its new package-sorting hub building and begin limited operations there at Piedmont Triad International Airport.
Workers have been tweaking the conveyor and sorting machines for several months inside the $300 million hub.
But FedEx planes at the airport have operated as always — in a nearby cargo terminal.
On Monday, however, the company’s three widebody jets and five small feeder jets will begin their runs at the massive building that can eventually handle scores of planes at a time.
About 160 workers are in the complex process of moving to the new building, said Jim McCluskey, a FedEx spokesman.
It’s the first step of a two-phase process designed to open the hub for wider operations in the fall.
Current cargo operations are a fraction of what FedEx hopes to be doing at its East Coast Hub as it grows in capacity.
“A hub operation is a much larger system compared to (the current) operation and it’s all geared toward volume,” McCluskey said.
FedEx , which expects weak demand through 2009, is delaying the start of overnight sorting operations at PTI for a few months and with a much smaller work force than anticipated.
By fall, depending upon the economy, the hub will begin its sorting operations with 200 additional workers, mostly part-time with benefits.
The company has not begun hiring those workers and will not announce its hiring process until it feels confident the economy can support the expansion.
The total of 350 workers is far lower than the 600 to 800 workers the company had predicted earlier that it would need when the hub opens.
But McCluskey said the changes say nothing about the company’s commitment to the Triad operation and everything about the bad economy.