Video shows East Northport FedEx driver tossing packages

An East Northport man frustrated with damage to packages he was sending to customers has posted a video he took of a FedEx driver who appeared to be throwing packages into the back of a truck Monday evening.

Jim Munson, 48, who runs a business selling items online, said he took the video when he was dropping off his latest sales at the FedEx Office Print & Ship Center on Jericho Turnpike in East Northport on Monday around 5 p.m.

“I saw the truck out front and I saw the gentleman was there, picking up the packages from the store,” Munson said. “I said, let me pull around front and see what’s going on there.”

Munson said he watched the man load four carts full of boxes into the truck. In Munson’s 2-minute video, which he posted on YouTube and sent to media organizations, the man stands in the parking lot and appears to roughly throw the boxes into the back of the truck in quick succession.

In a statement, FedEx said the employee behavior in the video “is not consistent with the professionalism FedEx Ground demonstrates every day in safely and securely delivering millions of packages to our customers.”

“We are committed to treating our customers’ packages with the utmost care and will take the appropriate action to address this situation,” the company said.

The company suggested that those who receive packages that are damaged should contact the sender and file a complaint.

Munson said in the past six months, he’s received a spike in complaints about damaged goods. In one incident, antique china arrived at a customer’s door in pieces and another customer’s vintage children’s bike arrived bent, he said.

All of the damage complaints were for items he mailed through FedEx and many were carefully marked with “Fragile” labels, he said.

Munson estimated he has lost about $1,000 during the past year by having to refund customer sales and shipping, plus the lost profit on broken items he can’t resell. He said he has not experienced similar issues shipping through the U.S. Postal Service.

Munson’s video is the latest in a growing trend of “package tossing” videos, where delivery employees are caught on camera mishandling packages or otherwise behaving badly. There’s even a website dedicated to the videos, including a few on Long Island, called DontThrowMyPackage.com.

Munson said he’s not looking to get anyone in trouble, but he hopes FedEx will use the incident to make positive changes. In the meantime, he’s using other shipping services.

“It kind of makes me question maybe it’s time for FedEx to revisit their training process,” he said.