Just look at the numbers from Peak '99 or so. I bet they're close.
Keep the faith,
fbh

 

Our local FEDEX Ground driver (...no, seriously folks) told me that peak for the "Ground side" was the Monday before Xmas (22 Dec) and the numbers for Ground were higher than last year.

Now, that may be good news or bad news for the Express side (i.e. significant "mode shift"?)

I too find it very interesting that the Express #s haven't been released.

One would think the Wall St analysts would almost demand it.

 

I have numbers from a station engineer (not flight engineer) that we did break a record on the 22nd. Although, we usually break numbers the whole week prior to Christmas.
He also gave me numbers and graphs that showed we were basically down 14-18% in December.

I still think management is still playing head games with us and that we won't furlough unless the economy get really bad this year. I am, however, updating the resume and looking for some part-time work that could become full-time in the mean time to cover my a*s!

 

From the Motley Fool website:

Now Is a Fantastic Time to Be a Value Investor
By Philip Durell
January 24, 2009 | Comments (0)

Recs
19

Since reaching October 2007's highs, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down a massive 40%. With its 44% drop, the S&P 500 is even worse; in fact, if you'd held an S&P 500 index fund for the last 10 years, your returns would be flat! But the flip side to this story is that stock valuations are cheaper than we've seen in a decade -- and even Warren Buffett is buying American stocks for his personal portfolio.

Many individual stocks have fared far worse than the broad-market indices. To take some extreme examples, financials from Citigroup and UBS to Colonial BancGroup (NYSE: CNB) and Corus Bankshares (NYSE: CORS), wrecked by excesses in financial markets, are down more than 80% from 2007's highs. But many extremely strong franchises have been dragged down by nothing more than the fear and panic surrounding the markets.

Which means ...
Now is a fantastic time to be a value investor.

Really. With stocks so widely sold off, and with pessimism so pervasive, you should make like a bargain shopper and pick out a few of the values that seem to be screaming, "Buy me!"

Of course, it is always difficult to believe that stocks could possibly go up when every day they seem to edge lower. We're human, after all, and a constant downward spiral brings an overwhelming sense of loss. It also makes us remember prior market crashes, like the Nasdaq bubble at the beginning of this decade or the Black Monday Crash of '87.

But if those or the recent memories make you want to shun the market, sell your stocks, and move to "safer" investments, let me be blunt: That's a recipe for disaster. The market crashes I alluded to before -- dot-coms and Black Monday -- were actually fantastic times to be net buyers of stocks. So although it may seem tough in today's chaos, now's the time to go shopping, because there are many superior companies trading at discount prices.

Blue-chip bargains
I encourage investors to look long and hard at blue-chip market leaders such as FedEx (NYSE: FDX), WellPoint (NYSE: WLP), and Berkshire Hathaway. Let's look at each of these in more depth.

FedEx's profit margins are being squeezed by a slowing U.S. economy and rising fuel costs. Shares, which are down more than 40% from their 52-week high, could go lower in the short term. But in the long run I expect the company to return to double-digit earnings growth as FedEx replaces its fleet with newer, fuel-efficient planes and the economy gets out of its slump.

 

We are somewhere in the neighborhood of 14-18% overmanned too.

 

655 to 842 pilots over-manned? Not even close, maybe 100-200, but not enough that we should be willing to let anyone on our seniority list be furloughed!

 

Guys are getting 58 hr lines yet you say less than 5% overmanned.

I just can't connect the dots to come up with your 100-200.

 

Yes, but other guys are flying 100-150 hours the same month, thereby taking up the slack for those with 58 hour lines. If EVERYBODY was flying 58 hours per month and only 58 hours per month I doubt we would be overmanned at all.