Shipping industry poised for massive upheaval – can FedEx weather the storm?

© Khunaspix Dreamstime.

A fine feature article from the Los Angeles Times, which serves as a useful companion piece to our post today reporting on FedEx’s second-quarter results, and describes in fascinating detail the existential challenges facing both FedEx and its arch competitor, UPS. Will the unmistakable drift of Amazon towards becoming a logistics suppliers in its own right; the quest of numerous start-ups to develop an Uber for freight; and technological paradigm shift caused by the widespread of deployment of drones and driverless vehicles combine to make the huge investments FedEx has made over the past few decades redundant? “It’s a transformation that will test whether sprawling, sophisticated facilities such as the World Hub are a bulwark that protects the company or an expensive anchor that makes it hard to reposition for the future.”