FedEx Ground Reviews in Portland, OR Area

Pros

-Benifits after 1000 hours(FULL)
-Easy to get time off except during peak season. You will be there everyday all of November and December. You do get the holidays off but no exstended vacation.
-Paid vacation
-25 cent raise at 1 3 6 and 9months and 50 cents at 1 year and every year after.
-Work hard and become a good package handler, you will get noticed and will get more hours.
-promote from within. Makes managers easy to work with and are really god people.

Cons

-Work load can vary. Light and quick days or very heavy and long days. Your assingment may be worse than others and may not get help.
-Other workers can be slow, thus giving you a bigger work load. They will need help.
-A person can load 400/hr everyday and build great walls and never break a safety rule and another can load 200/hr build horrible walls, throw boxes and break rules constantly and whine all the time. The pay is the same. Not much can be done sometimes to make this improve. Management does try though.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep doing what your doing. But find more ways to reward the hardest workers. Mainly the ones that have been there a while. It can be very hard working in the trailers and bringing it for that long.

Pros

the best reason to work at FedEx is their benefit package. they offer a very good health care , Dental and Vision package at a reasonable rate paid by the employee. this is a great thing to have and it is available to part time employees (which is pretty much everyone)

Cons

the downside of FedEx is how ridiculous the pace is. I work in what is called pre-load. this is the loading of the medium size vans and bigger box trucks for local delivery. this job requires one person to pick boxes of of a conveyor belt then scan the proper bar code on the package then place it in the proper area of the truck or van. the problem is that one person can be assigned to do this for 2 or 3 trucks. the scanning drives me insane because sometimes the scanner doesn't read the code as fast as you would prefer and to top that off after you scan you have to hit this button twice for the scan to count and if i had a nickle for every time the second press of the button didn't engage I'd never work again and you go to scan the next package the thing beeps at you for like 10 to 12 seconds.....doesn't seem like much but at the rate boxes are going down the belt that's equal to 4 boxes going by you. scanning is a huge deal there too you may scan up to 500 packages a night but if you miss more than 2 or 3 scans,that means trouble for you. what drives me nuts is that if the scanning is so important why can't you slow down just a bit. it's very frustrating to say the least. they try to squeeze as much work as possible out of you in the least amount of time. I'm old enough and have been working long enough to know that time is money....I get that but it just a bit much. FedEx is also great about giving raises except you will never see it on your paycheck. I have worked there for almost 3 years now(I am really trying to get out also) and every time I have gotten a raise my hours have been cut . but guess what......the workload stayed the same.......we just work harder and faster. they are also good about vacation pay except they don't give you a full shifts pay they only pay you for 3.5 hrs. which the way things seem to be going that's about all you will work anyway. when I first started working there I worked about 5 hrs. a day then they have slowly sliced off about a half an hour every six months.
 if your just looking for some part time work it's not to bad if your not trying to be long term. when I first started I thought it would be great to work there full time...wrong!!! they only hire one or two full time people a year so that's kind of hard. other then all of what I have mentioned above, I have to say one of the good things about working there are the other employees. I have met and worked with some great people and have to say that I do work with a great crew. for the most part the shift managers are good and fair people and they are only doing THEIR job by making everything go so fast

Advice to Senior Management

if you are so concerned about scanning how about slowing down the pace just a bit. I'm not talking about going at a snails pace but trying to cram 5 hrs. worth of work into 3 or 4 hrs seems a bit much. you could also hire a few more people to work on the belt lines instead of having one person have to deal with 3 trucks. I'm also sure if you did that , you wouldn't go broke and things could work more efficiently

Pros

This is a great job for students looking for a summer job, or extra work on the side. When I was there, you usually worked about 4 hours a day, and your monthly paycheck is about 400 to 450. They'll let you off when their goals have been met, and will cut you early if your shift is slower then other shifts while balancing the remaining freight to be sorted by faster shifts.

I was a Package Handler at their Swan Island location. Portland sees all fours seasons, and seasonal extremes Prepare for the elements, you work through the heat and the cold.

The benefits are okay. They'll provide tuition assistance, and as a college student, this goes a long ways. Other then that, most of the people who work here tend to live paycheck to paycheck, or are students needing extra cash. Upward mobility is very limited.

Cons

This location had such a high turnover rate; I was only there for 3 months. The work is pretty intense, and you should finish about one truck per hour... hopefully five a shift per person.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire more workers to handle the work load. You need more spotters removing large objects and hazardous materials to keep the package handlers working smoothly.

Also, reward employees for exceeding sorting goals with something other then pizza; we're the fastest sort in the country and we're not middle schoolers. Find other ways to reward us.

Pros

Upper management in Portland, OR is very interested in developing those below them. Medical benefits are great. Job security is very high for a manager as long as one does not date package handlers, maintains one's integrity, and shows up every day with a good attitude. Every day is a little different, but similar enough that one can learn how to perform the job. If one can survive at FedEx, one can thrive anywhere: it's good training.

Cons

The work is intense and demands a wide range of soft skills, mostly in the areas of dealing with people and solving problems. The last few years, the company has not paid out bonuses that were earned.

Advice to Senior Management

Encourage younger managers to earn a business degree, or an MBA.