FedEx Says Holiday Shipping Won’t Slow Vaccine
Dec 20, 2020, 3:55 PM
OLIVE BRANCH, MISSISSIPPI - DECEMBER 20: FedEx trucks prepare to move boxes containing the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the McKesson distribution center on December 20, 2020 in Olive Branch, Mississippi. The federal government plans to distribute over the coming week a total of 7.9 million doses of vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer Inc. (Photo by Paul Sancya - Pool/Getty Images)
(Photo by Paul Sancya - Pool/Getty Images)
TOPEKA, Kan. — A FedEx executive says a higher-than-normal volume of Christmas-season package deliveries won’t interfere with the company’s effort to ship coronavirus vaccine doses.
Jenny Robertson, a FedEx senior vice president, said two trucks on Sunday moved doses of a vaccine developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health from a factory in Olive Branch, Mississippi, to the company’s world hub in nearby Memphis, Tennessee, so that shipments could be loaded onto its airplanes bound for multiple states.
She said the company is keeping its networks for shipping the vaccine and handling Christmas packages separate.
“Nothing’s more important than the delivery of the vaccine to us, but we have put in place distinct networks that are keeping e-commerce moving through our ground network and vaccines moving through our express network,” she said. “We’re able to manage this volume right now.”
Robertson said the company has seen holiday-level volumes for shipping packages since March because consumers switched how they buy products during the pandemic.
