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arXiv:1410.6723math.HO

The FedEx problem

Kent E. Morrison

Early discovery. Linked by one identifiable commenter. This paper is outside the main ranking; a mention is not an endorsement.

Abstract

The original shipping strategy of FedEx is to fly all packages to a hub location during the afternoon and evening, sort them there, and then fly them to their destinations during the night for delivery the next day. This leads to interesting mathematical questions: Given a population represented by points in Euclidean space or on a sphere, what is the location of the point of the hub that minimizes the total distance to all the points? Is such a point unique? Then using census data from 2000 we examine how close the FedEx hub in Memphis is to the hub for the U.S. population.

arXiv comments
14 pages, 6 figures
Journal reference
College Math. J. 41 (2010), no. 3, 222--232
DOI
doi:10.4169/074683410X488719
Subjects
math.HOHistory and Overview math.MGMetric Geometry math.PRProbability

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Linked by 1 identifiable commenter in 1 comment across 1 thread, from Sep 2025 to Sep 2025. Found in 1 HN submission from Mar 2015 to Mar 2015. Open submission discussions.

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  1. Primer on FedEx's Distribution Network (2024) 1 comment

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