The article seems to be missing a lot of details. FedEx ground has a more modern capital plant because they bought an awful carrier and just completed a multi billion dollar capital program to build out facilities.
It also doesn’t mention that Fedex operates two companies ground and express. Most of the B2B stuff is via FedEx express.
IMO the actual information here is that UPS approached the market based on their long term plan and maximized utilization of their capital investments. Now they’re looking to invest in modernization. The question is, was it smarter to stay the course, learn from Fedex’s experience and lock into tech at a lower price, or should they have scrambled?