For those missing packages

The recent posts about missing coins and lost packages had me reading this story of 3-400 Fed Ex packages discarded in Alabama. Maybe your package will be found and delivered? What a nice Christmas that would make.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hundreds-missing-fedex-packages-found-123639100.html

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Whelp, that inspires faith in the company.........

 

Figures.

 

Maybe they can get Tom Hanks to go and deliver them in character from "Castaway".

 

LOL, that's priceless, but it illustrates the fact that things can go terribly wrong.......Tom Hanks example involved a catastrophic plane crash. The OP example could have involved a local crash up whereupon the packages were strewn into a ravine.

My opine? A disgruntled employee, disgusted as what he perceived as being over burdened, dumped the lot..........

 

Last scene.............he finds much happiness (I think. One can only hope).......

 

Probably more than one but this is almost certainly what happened. There's no crash/bodies or anything else, aka someone almost certainly did it intentionally

 

That's probably it.

A big thumbs up to the local church that supplied Thanksgiving dinner to all the FedEx employees doing the recovery.

Cal

 

That would be my opinion as well, and FedEx should be able to fairly easily determine who did it. I'm sure their records will show which trucks they were on and who was driving when they went out for delivery.

 

Apparently, the deed was done by a single driver who dumped six truckloads in the ravine. Don't know if he has been charged yet. See link.

Cal

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...hundreds-of-boxes-in-alabama-woods/ar-AARlX38

 

What would you charge him with? If it was mail there would be some federal charges you could bring but I'm not sure any laws were actually broken here. Company policies sure, but what actual laws? It's not fraud, it's not theft. Destruction of private property maybe? Customers might have a breach of contract case against FedEx for non delivery, but not against the driver, he's not a party in the contract.

 

I believe it's theft. He stole the packages that were owned by someone else. What he decided to do with those packages was his own business. Just because he wasn't in possession of them doesn't mean he didn't steal them.

 

It's definitely theft, they weren't his packages to take and dispose of.

 

But he didn't take them, he just dumped them and didn't deliver them. Might call it theft, but I think it's a stretch. If I was on a jury I doubt I'd vote to convict.

 

His hired position is a deliveryman. When those packages are in his possession it's his obligation as a representative of the company to transfer possession to the customer who contracted his companys' services. Delivering to the wrong address is merely a misdelivery. Possession was transferred. Not delivering to anyone, dumping them in a ravine, is theft. No different than if he kept the packages for himself.

 

Oh, it's vandalism for sure ... probably at the felony level. No different than if someone rented a car and deliberately dumped it in a ravine with damage. Prosecutors are probably waiting on FedEx as to whether FedEx will cooperate. Even if FedEx doesn't agree, some of the shippers or recipients may. But it will take time to contact that many shippers or recipients.

Cal

 

He did take them, he had to have taken them to dump then. Just because a car theft ditches a car it doesnt mean they never stole it. They were never his packages to decide whether or not, the second he stopped doing his job of delivering them and did something else with them he has stolen the packages

 

Package dumper to be charged with five counts of felony cargo theft. See the link.

Cal
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a...uspect-expected-to-turn-himself-in/ar-AARHwlG

 

It wasn't really an employee in this case. It was FedEx Ground, so it was an independent contractor. They buy their vehicles and paint them and so forth, and start delivering. It's a completely separate corporation from what we think of as FedEx, which is now officially called "FedEx Express" (yes, technically Federal Express Express..., but I guess they want FedEx to be a word now instead of an abbreviation.) I think FedEx Ground was formed out of their purchase of Roadway / RPS way back – remember them?

I think using contractors instead of employees leads to all sorts of issues downstream, for all sorts of businesses and industries. For example, using contractors for sensitive national security jobs is a disastrous policy – they won't feel like they're truly a part of the organization, because they're not, and this will shape their behavior.

Same with delivery – psychologically, I think it's a lot easier for a contractor to do something as extreme as dumping packages than it would be for an employee who feels like they're part of the company. (Coercive monopolies like the USPS are an exception here, since the culture of entitlement and indifference, along with the unusual job security and lack of accountability, will outpunch not being a contractor.)

 

You have to be a horrible person to do something like that, whether you're a part of the company or not that's just someone that just flat out doesnt care and didnt want to do their job. Being a contractor doesnt make you more likely to steal like that.

Now what you could argue is that contractors arent always vetted as much which makes it more likely to hire a bad apple like that which is probably true, but doing extreme things like that you're not going to stop and say "if i was an employee i wouldnt be stealing all these packages"