FedEx Looking at Container Business - June 25, 2008

Fred Smith had some interesting comments about his views on the ship-borne container business.

There's a tremendous movement of the lower value added traffic off of the traditional freighter airplanes onto the water, onto the sea. We pick that traffic up in FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight as it comes into the United States and we manage a fair amount of our FedEx Trade Networks unit. That's one of the reasons we bought Watkins and converted it into FedEx National. It is perfectly suited to move items that are coming in on the water into the interior points of the United States in the absolutely most efficient manner. So these long-term segular trends play to our strengths. It's exactly the way we're configured. And I just came back from Europe last week and again went to a couple of our locations and you can see this taking place right in front of your eyes.

Those comments were made on the June 18 conference call.  And sure enough, FedEx Trade Networks is trying to attract new customers  just as FredEx said.