How's Everyone Doing in LTL Right Now?

That's very good money at UPS I'd never ever see that kind of money ever in my entire life dragging sets of doubles down the eastern half of the Ohio turnpike for GFS like I do now. Although I must confess for me at least last week I had a pretty good week 5 double runs probably did close to 2500 miles took home netted over a grand which is very good I thought for a night shuttle driver I did deliver one store which that helps to make some money.

So my question is, these sleeper teams at UPS is the freight(parcels) that they are hauling are the loads that these high dollar sleeper teams are taking are they loads that are just that valuable or is it expensive priority got to have in 1 or 2 day freight that's red hot and has to move, but the people are don't quite want to send it by aeroplane or is it an entire trailer from one customer going cross country to a UPS hub to then get into the system and go to the respective end users? I do see those guys pulling a lot of singles I got passed by one today he had 53' gray UPS trailer, but I see them pulling a lot of single 28' trailers once in a while a set of doubles her or there, but the fact that I see so many singles leads me to believe and I don't know I'm just guessing that, that trailer is full of packages from one single customer all headed to a big city far away and it's the fastest way to get it down the road. Instead of taking the stuff to the hub and sorting it and all that. A big shipper has a 28' trailer with 1000 packages in it all of them destine for Denver will say, UPS puts a sleeper cab on it and it goes from the dock direct to the UPS hub in Denver and onto the package cars for delivery.

I mean at the end of the day Isn't that what LTL companies use sleeper teams for? I know UPS is different, but a large break bulk terminal is finishing up there sorting and repacking and the dispatcher see there is a set of doubles one trailer packed with freight to Denver and another packed with freight to Las Vegas instead of hooking them to a regular line haul schedule and sending them terminal to terminal and pony expressing it all the way to where they have to go for arguments sake couldn't the dispatcher just have a sleeper team hook to the set and drop the Denver trailer in Denver, and hook on to another trailer going to Las Vegas and carry on down the line?

Does UPS use these guys like that? A big UPS hub has a 53' trailer with packages all going to same zip code instead of sending it with the day cab line drivers we can just send it direct via sleeper team? Just curious. Anyhow I better go to bed I have a busy day tomorrow see you guys later.

 

I know Santa Fe before they were BNSF said that one year they moved 40,000 trailers for UPS and did not have any service failures, but Santa Fe was pretty well run in the early and middle 1990s, but once all the Class I railroads started merging together in the mid and late 1990s and other e-commerce stuff started happening it kind of clogged the railroads up.

Some of the railroads were kind of crummy, Southern Pacific was crummy and Union Pacific had a horrible time integrating them, when Union Pacific bought out Chicago and Northwestern in 1996 that wasn't as big of a deal, but I know Southern Pacific was always kind of crummy. Burlington Northern I think was kind of crummy too, its just that when they merged with Santa Fe because they didn't have any redundant trackage the merger went a little easier. But I had wondered if the teams were a way to by pass the air planes and that would explain all the single trailers I see it's what I thought air, next day or 2 day package and they learned we can throw a sleeper cab on it and get it there in the same time for a fraction of the cost.

 

What happened over at UPS Freight now that it's a year after the fact. UPS bought out Overnite and Motor Cargo to basically use as a loss leader to gain more package business and ran UPS Freight into the ground with crazy discounting in order to gain major parcel shipments and customers?

From what I can tell FedEx did a much better job with FedEx freight then UPS did with UPS Freight, but that was only because UPS didn't really care about freight. However obviously UPS is a lot better at ground parcels then FedEx is. FedEx Ground isn't the same level as UPS. However my guess is FedEx might have the edge on UPS when it comes to airfreight. It's probably pretty close, but I've heard it described as FedEx is an air parcel shipping system that just so happens to have a ground shipping component and UPS is a trucking company that just so happens to own air planes. From what I can tell UPS kind of ran UPS Freight into the ground while gaining bigger package customers and once there was no more, they sold the freight business off to Trans Force.

 

Oh dear, What happened did the police have to come and all that kind of thing?