Package Handling 101 - The Mezzanine

With the arrival of my highly anticipated, week-long vacation from FedEx, I find that my head is filled with thoughts about the work I will be missing this week. Though I am supposed to be going to bed, I feel the need to share with you the secrets of the FedEx Ground Mezzanine.

I've written about loading and unloading and work conditions at FedEx, but until this last week the Mezzanine was a complete mystery to me. I knew that the privileged few who worked up there were given a radio each, with which to communicate with the control room and with maintenance. But I knew nothing of what the job itself entailed, other than that, on rare occasions, someone might be sent up there as a respite for loading downstairs. Because of that, surely it had to be an easy job, I thought.

The Mezzanine is not easy. Perhaps, physically, it is less demanding and doesn't damage the muscles in your lower back in the way that loading and unloading can. In that sense, yes, it is easier. When it comes to being able to move and make judgments quickly, it is significantly harder than any other job that a package handler might be given. The Mezzanine is a job that completely overwhelms and terrifies me, to the point where I can't even make sense of how I actually feel about it.

Boxes fly at you far fast than they do when they slide down the chute in the load ends. You have to be quick to pull trash off the rollers, identify problem boxes, and pull off boxes that need to be sent to QA. At any moment you may be called away from your post to fix a chute jam on your load end, or to check the end of sorter photo eye, where trash can make the system think there is a jam. It is on your shoulders to keep the machine that is the hub running smoothly and efficiently. You, and a few other select package handlers, are responsible.

In light of the stress that working in the Mezzanine can cause, I also have to say that it is exhilarating. I enjoy the work. Using my mind at FedEx was something I never thought I would be doing, but now I have the chance to exercise both my brain and my body. It may seem boring at times, but at any moment I may have to make a split-second decision or rush away to fix a problem that could shut down part of the system.

There are three unload wings in the hub. Therefore, there are three primary singulators where packages are separated into a single-file line. From those primary singulators, packages are sorted into four other areas; A1, A2, B1, or B2. Each side has a secondary singulator. At each primary and secondary singulator there is a Mezzanine worker posted to help separate the packages into a single-file line. Singulators received their name because of their job of separating the packages. From the secondary singulators, the packages are sent along a belt where they are scanned, their measurements are taken, and they are then whisked off to the proper chute to be loaded into a trailer. Occasionally those chutes jam near the top, if a package sticks to the metal or doesn't have enough momentum to make it past the entrance to the chute. If this happens and the photo eyes that report jams are blocked, a Mezzanine worker posted on a secondary singulator will be sent in to clear that jam with a large metal pole. Occasionally there are jams in other areas as well.

It sounds easy. But jams can happen anywhere. Just on Friday I had a box on my transporter (the belt that leads up to my singulator) flip up and get caught between the belt and the ceiling. Boxes piled up behind it, and before we could break the jam it broke free, breaking the box that had caused it and nearly taking part of the ceiling with it. I had to rush back to the singulator to meet the massive river of boxes that threatened to spill over the edge of the rail guards on the belt and slam right into me. At any other time, some other section of belt or rollers may jam, shutting the entire system down. It is our job to keep that from happening to the best of our ability.

I never would have thought that I would be offered the chance to work in the Mezzanine. I don't regret my decision to take the position, for all that the work scares me at times and I sometimes wonder if I will be able to meet my manager's expectations. I didn't think a job at FedEx could be fun.

Package Handler 101 - The Trailer and How to Load It

Package handlers at FedEx Ground are most often responsible for loading or unloading the trailers that travel across the country to deliver customers' packages to the sorting facilities. Today I want to talk a bit about the trailer and how you load it as well as some of the dangers that come with loading (or unloading!) a trailer.

Here in Portland we deal with two types of trailers. A normal trailer is shorter than the normal semi truck that you see and has a belly in between the wheels. Usually a truck pulls two of these shorter trailers. The long box is more like what a semi truck usually pulls and doesn't have a belly like the normal trailers do. Long boxes are also significantly more difficult to load and is better suited for taller package handlers (in other words, not me).

Typical FedEx trailers with bellies - usually pulled in pairs.

 Interior of a regular trailer, flaps closed over the belly.

These regular trailers have a set of roller built in above the belly. Boxes come down the chute and are then supposed to roll down towards the back of the trailer. Because of the number of boxes coming down the chute in most trailers, this rarely works out as planned. Facing the direction of the second image above, the package handler loads the right side of the belly, then the second side, and then begins in the nose (the part that connects to the truck) of the trailer and works their way to the opening of the trailer. It is important to note that long boxes do not come equipped with a set of rollers.

A long box attached to a truck. There is no belly.

 The interior of an older long box (they really haven't improved much from this).

 Long boxes in comparison to normal trailers (the shorter ones) from a Denver location.

Because the long box doesn't have a set of rollers installed inside, they dock at special doors on a hub that have been equipped with a set of heavy pull-out rollers. One of the reasons why long boxes tend to be more difficult to load is because these rollers have to be pulled to the end of the trailer and then pushed back gradually. The also take up much of the inside, leaving little room to pass through along the sides. Boxes often fall and get stuck in between the walls of the trailer and the rollers, making it hard to get in and out. Because the long box is taller than the typical smaller trailer, a load stand must be used at all times, and even then it is harder for shorter people to reach high enough to fill in the last couple of rows in a wall of boxes, as is expected by managers. I was injured in a long box both because I could not handle constantly reaching up as high as I could and I was not strong enough to push the heavy rollers back each time I finished a wall. I pulled the muscles in my back between my shoulders.

When building walls of boxes inside the trailers you have to avoid stacking them in columns. These fall over more easily and put a lot of strain on the bottom box. When unloaders are injured it is most often because of a badly built wall that includes columns has fallen on them. Head injuries are common in the unload areas. I've had nights where I've clocked out after being hit on the head three or four times in a single night because some loader at some other hub didn't care about their walls.

An image of what a properly built wall should and should not have.

In the image I put together above, I have marked the positive and negative aspects of this wall of 'boxes'. Obviously in real life things wouldn't be quite this symmetrical, but FedEx seems to think that this is how real life works, since their training images tend to look a bit like this (though more professionally done).

First, you can see that to the right of the image there is a column of boxes, which I have marked as wrong. This would create an unstable wall and put too much pressure on the boxes at the bottom. Obviously this column isn't very tall, so there wouldn't be as much pressure, but it can still be dangerous to unloaders. Second, I have two boxes with directional arrows on them. When loading the arrows are always supposed to be pointing up. As you can see, I checked the box with an arrow pointing up and crossed out the one with the arrow pointing to the right. Finally, you will see three small check mark next to three red Ts that the lines of the boxes form. This is overlapping the boxes and it makes walls stable and distributes the pressure on the boxes at the bottom. This method is also called the bricklayer method.

Today, my hub follows a loading priority system called VOLT. I have absolutely no idea what VOLT stands for or how to use it when loading trailers, so I can't teach you about that. I was trained on the Five Priorities of Loading system, which I still hold to, with my own modifications (because I don't load very often anymore so I can get away with more than regular loaders).

The five priorities of loading are cornerstone, base shelf, alternate shelf, filler, and top fill/crushables. The cornerstone is usually that massive, heavy box that you probably can't life more than a few inches off the ground. It is typically placed against the wall of the trailer, forming the first part of the base shelf, or the bottom row of boxes that starts your wall. Each row of boxes is called a shelf. Often you will have a taller box that reaches above the general height of the shelf you are building (such as the tall box on the right side of the image above). The part that goes above your current shelf forms an alternate shelf, where you can start another shelf above the one you are working on.

You will always have spaces in between boxes that need to be filled. That is where filler boxes come in handy. These are smaller boxes that can be placed in the gaps that are always part of a wall. This both increases cubes (the amount of cubic space you fill inside of the trailer) and the stability of the wall. Sometimes they are also referred to as wedge boxes.

Finally there are the top crushables, or top fill as we like to call it. More often than not, your wall is going to have space leftover at the top, between the last self and the ceiling. This needs to be filled as well, and there are a variety of boxes that can do the job. Flat, lightweight boxes are preferred, but anything small that is light, can be crushed, or is some kind of bag will work to fill in the space. The more space you fill the better your cubes are (and the more money the company saves!).

Another type of package that we get to deal with is the incompatible or IC (we pronounce it ink/inks). These packages do not come down a chute, but on a separate belt where they are manually pulled off and placed on a flat set of rollers next to the chute where they wait to be loaded. IC packages are not to be built into a wall if they are excessively heavy or an awkward shape. Specifically, metal and tires are not to be placed above the floor unless they are stacked on top of one another (for example, a stack of tires). IC packages include metal, tubs or containers of liquid, thin boxes (less than two fingers thick), wooden packages, packages weighing 100+ pounds, tires, and other miscellaneous items (I've often received igloo shaped dog houses and plastic kayaks/canoes).

And that, my friends, is the basics of loading. There are many other things that I could cover here, but that is for another post on another day. Just keep in mind that this is the basics - there are a lot of things that also come into play when you are loading, and some of these basics and standards are thrown out the door in favor of speed and simply getting the job done.

So, who wants to go get a job at FedEx now?

Package Handler 101 - There is no such thing as getting sick

You might think that the title of this blog is a joke. It's not. When you work at FedEx, you can't be sick. If you are, you get punished. Because if you go in sick and need to be sent home, people get mad at you. If you call in sick, you get written up and won't be considered for any new positions for three months.

I have been sick for the last four days. I have gone in every goddamn day and worked my ass of for FedEx. Why? Because I want to be hired as full time at some point in the very near future. Each day I've gone in, getting progressively worse through each shift. Today I was coughing so much that I could barely lift boxes because of the pain in my sides.

FedEx does not give regular package handlers sick days. You can call in three times within a month. Each time you will get written up for it. On the fourth time you get fired. The end. That's it. So, if you can't make it in because of the weather, car troubles, etc. and then you get suddenly sick and have to miss three days, you get fired.

It makes sense, right? I mean, you shouldn't be missing work for anything that isn't serious. And if it is serious then you should go to a doctor. The problem is that even a little sniffle makes work at FedEx extremely more difficult and tiring than you would think. A sniffle at FedEx is like having bronchitis or pneumonia. The dust from trailers and vans that have traveled the road for years without being cleaned out, dirt spills (or sand, or cat litter), strange smells (why does that guy smell like rotten spaghetti?), and the physical activity are enough to turn a little sniffle into something a lot worse, and it makes it as difficult as hell to work. I started out with a sore throat. It turned into sinus issues and a bad cough. I could have used a day off.

So, a lot of people end up coming in sick (like me!). Guess what happens? The rest of the hub gets sick. If it's something like the stomach flu, one day it gets to the point where the hub has twenty call-ins because people are too busy puking their guts out to be able to even attempt to drive to work. And this all because FedEx is too stingy to give it's package handlers a few sick days here and there.

I'm fairly certain that the higher ups (a.k.a service managers, who run the separate areas) get sick days. Why? Because I can't remember seeing a sick one. Ever. They don't come in occasionally during the cold and flu season. Once in a while one of them might lose their voice for a short time. Ultimately, though, I have yet to have a sick manager.

My first summer with the company, I threw up. It was hot, things were running fast, and my stomach got very, very angry. I went to the bathroom, was there for a while, threw up everything, felt weak as hell, and went to my manager. When I told him that I had thrown up (which should have resulted in me being sent home, legally), I was promptly yelled at and then ignored. I worked until break time, at which point my manager came up to me and rudely said, "I can't make you stay so go home if you want to." Being new to the company, I wasn't sure what to do, so I stayed. Despite how shitty I felt that night, I kicked ass, and my manager admitted that he really appreciated my help.

I should have left. No one but him would have cared. The entire hub agrees that he is an asshole.

My point in all of this is that, as a package handler, you cannot get sick. It's against some unspoken rule. If you get sick and need time off, you will be punished. If you get sick and need to go home, your manager will whine and be rude to you. That's just how it works.

This time, I've been letting my performance slip as I get sicker, and I spread my germs as much as possible. Perhaps, if this continues, FedEx will rethink it's sick day policy.

It's worth a shot, right?

Package Handling 101 - How To Ship A Package

When you read the title of this post, you probably thought to yourself that the process is simple. Everyone knows how to ship a package, right? You put what you want to ship in a box and then you take it to a shipping place - say, the post office, or a FedEx Office store, or UPS - and then they ship it for you. That is how it works, essentially. But there is something that people don't think about when they ship a package, and that is actually packaging the package.

This is a very important step to shipping a package, and it's one that a lot of people completely fuck up.

During the sorting process a package goes through a series of belts, chutes, and rollers that carry it from one place to another. Often, packages are picked up by local vans (those square van-like truck things). Inside the van the packages can easily be crushed, tossed around, can fall, and be generally abused by the trip, depending on the road quality, the driver, and where in the van the package is sitting. At the FedEx hub, it is unloaded by a package handler by being sent along a small set of rollers to a belt that moves it up into the system. From there it travels with thousands of other packages, some small and some large, through a system where it is sorted. Often, there are jams in the system when a package - often one that is too long or too large - blocks up the belt system. This can result in packages getting crushed, especially if none of the mezzanine workers are nearby to quickly fix the jam.

Once they are sorted, the packages are then sent to their destination via a belt that leads to a load end. When they reach the load end they are dropped down a specific chute that takes them directly into the trailer that they are meant to be loaded in. This is the part where the package encounters the most damage.

A package might be fine going down a chute, depending on it's size, the amount of other packages going down the chute, and the quality of the package. If there are a lot of packages going down the chute then there is a good chance that the chute is lanefull. Lanefull means that there are so many packages that a warning light comes on saying that it is backed up and needs to be cleared out. Often the packages are weighing down on one another, and packages that are lighter or not very strong are likely to be crushed or burst open. Small packages won't necessarily be crushed if they are well packed. That is where "how to ship a package" comes into play.

The first step to shipping a package is packing the package in question. And the first step in packing a package is choosing a box (I'm only focusing on boxes here - everything else is typically incompatible, so the process is different). Here are a few rules when it comes to choosing a box:

1. Don't pick a box that is significantly larger than what you are shipping. The more open space in a box, the more likely it can be crushed. Air doesn't give much resistance against other, potentially larger packages.
2. Don't reuse a box too many times. Every time it goes through the system it acquires more damage and gets weaker. The weaker it gets, the more likely it is to be torn apart, crushed, or otherwise damaged when you use it.
3. Don't use a box that's too small for what you want to ship. If you have to squeeze it in, that means its too small. If it bulges out, it won't sit right on the belt, while going down rollers, and when it is loaded. It means that the item could be damaged.
4. If you have to tape two boxes together for the package to fit, just find a bigger box. Tape does not hold up well in the system.

The second step is putting the item in the box. The main idea here is to make sure there is as little empty space as possible. If you have to, fill in empty space with cushioning things, such as torn up newspaper, packing peanuts, bubble wrap, or even a towel or something else soft. The third step is sealing it. The key here is to use packing tape, or some other sturdy tape. Even duct tape! Don't be afraid to tape it tightly and don't be afraid to use a lot of it. If you're worrying about how hard it will be to open, don't. Tape is your friend. Use the tape.

If you follow these steps, your package should be good. As an added measure, here are some things to consider, from the view of the package handlers where I work.

1. Arrows don't matter if the package fits better in a different direction, unless a manager is watching. Speed and wall structure is more important than directional arrows.
2. Fragile doesn't mean anything. Half the packages say it. Bright colors or big letters don't make a difference, and writing it more than once doesn't make it any more fragile than any other package.
3. Packages that say "do not lay flat" were obviously packed by an imbecile because, due to the nature f the system, the package has to lie flat in order to be moved to the trailer. Usually these packages are thin and don't stand up well on their own.
4. Re-taping a package that fell apart or came un-taped is annoying and time wasting, and sometimes isn't worth it if there are a lot of other packages to deal with. FedEx stresses speed over quality when there are a lot of packages.

Today I will end the lesson with that. Of course, the package handlers thing a lot of other things about certain packages and most of those thoughts include plenty of insults and swearing. But hopefully this little lesson will help a few people better package their packages.