If you know anything about Fred Smith FedEx, he's someone who's incredibly clear in his convictions, does not like to be pushed around, and is not afraid to stonewall the other side if he feels it's to his advantage.

Besides being a Marine veteran of Vietnam, he has stonewalled the increase of unions (outside of the pilot's union) at FedEx at every turn, threatened to pull a massive order of Boeing plans in 2009 if Congress passed legislation which included his employees in a new Labor Act.  He threatened to destroy the careers of Congresspeople who promoted the legislation."

And now, don't look so surprised when FedEx went its own way vis-a-vis #Amazon.  I expect we have two extremely strong-willed men in Jeff Bezos and Fred Smith.  Amazon likely had huge demands on both price and network flexibility and Fred Smith is not at all afraid to tell them to take a hike.

Kudos to one of my readers for shedding light on this thread of the discussion.