Truck Signs Give Us Important Information
The movie, Cast Away , staring Tom Hanks is a bit of a sleeper. A FedEx guy is stranded on an island and spends part of his time talking to a soccer ball. The end is even more disappointing as he delivers, personally, one package he rescued. No one is home, but he meets a pretty woman at the end of the lane after the delivery. You think, hey, maybe this poor sap will get a small break and meet someone nice. Not so much. It is sort of a movie you can cast away. Ha ha.
As we drive about in our motor home, we notice things like signs on trucks. We have noticed that FedEx trucks say “FedEx” in big letters and then “Ground” in blue underneath. This is an interesting designation for a truck. Are we to believe that some of the FedEx trucks fly? Do FedEx airplanes have “FedEx” in big letter and then “Air” in blue underneath? Is there some confusion at the staging areas as to which carriers are planes and which are trucks? Or, is the message subliminal, telling me I could also ship by Air or Ground depending on which carrier I am seeing? I sort of knew that, because there are always three prices when you have something shipped and I figured a package coming from the Midwest in one day would have to be shipped by air.
Just when we thought we had exhausted all ideas on the subject, we saw a FedEx truck with no designation as to whether it was FedEx Air or FedEx Ground. Being quick off the mark, both Ruth and I figured, “Ground. Gotta be.” Of course we have no idea whether our assumption was correct or not. Perhaps this was an older truck before FedEx began to label their carriers or a newer truck no longer needing designation because all employees now know the difference between a plane and a truck. Probably not; I feel sure FedEx employees already knew the difference before labels.
It almost makes me want to watch Cast Away again to see if the plane had “Air” written in blue letters under “FedEx”. Almost. *
* You cannot imagine my shock and surprise when I went to Google Images and saw that FedEx planes say “FedEx” in large letters and “Express” in smaller letters underneath. I suppose there were not many antonyms for “Express” that were very complementary so someone suggested “Ground”. It is better than “Poky”, I suppose.
And yet this begs the question: Why, when FedEx is an abbreviation for Federal Express, would a plane have FedEx Express? Federal Express Express seems needlessly redundant.