Never Stand Still

Hey guys I'm back!

So lets see the next segment in the CF saga of the early 1990s was what in the heck was CF to do with Emery Air Freight?
CF had lost 223 million since they acquired Emery Air Freight and had dragged the company's stock price from high thirties almost to $13.00 a share.

Not to mention CF had pumped nearly 1 billion dollars into Emery Air Freight and the company had done nothing but lost money.

People like us back in the day predicted that after Scott left CF Emery would be next to go.

Now with Emery just killing the crap out of CF and dragging the company into the gutter, Donald Moffitt who was C.O.O. of CF at the time decided it was time to look for a buyer and sell Emery Air Freight.

Only problem was, most companies are not interested in buying a business that is better at losing money then making money, so trying to sell Emery was a bust and could not be done. CF was stuck with Emery.

Now there were two options for CF and that was to cut Emery down to the size of the old CF Air Freight pictured above or to just shut down Emery completely and cease operations.

Remember CF's trucking operations at this time were profitable, but Emery was a mess and always had been.

Now down sizing at Emery had occurred and had been going on all through the early 1990s.

In Spring of 1990 Emery closed 21 Purolator Air Freight Terminals and laid off workers at it's Dayton, Ohio hub and Scranton, PA accounting office.

Emery never actually told the full extent of the layoffs but CF's best estimates are between 8,000-10,000 were laid off during that time.

Larry Scott had thought about shutting Emery down and I keep thinking with as much trouble as Emery Air Freight was why did they not just put it under. Seriously all we do on this thread is talk about Emery Air Freight we rarely get to talk about the trucking that CF did, mainly because Emery Air Freight was such a dud of an investment and it came with this albatross known as Purolator Air Freight. The man who okayed all that should have been fired, oh wait...

Anyhow Larry Scott thought about putting Emery down, but because of laws and a bunch of business mumbo jumbo the lawyers at CF decided that putting Emery down would leave CF's other assets open vulnerable so CF lawyers decided against putting Emery down.

Unable to escape this "albatross" CF the board of directors decided they needed to do something and make the service more "marketable".

So they fired Donald Berger who was the president of Emery Air Freight and brought in Arthur C. Bass who was the ex-vice president of this company:

Bass had a good record of turning things around and Leach who was a big shot at CF at the time in the early 1990s urged for Bass.
Moffit did not like Bass and thought that the board just heard a bunch of fancy talk from a fancy talker. Moffit was not as impressed with Bass like everyone else.

So of course what did they do? They ignored Moffit who was instrumental in keeping CF from going down the tubes 12 years earlier then when they really went down the tubes and hired Bass.

Bass immediately got in at Emery and started trying to turn Emery into a mini Federal Express. Which didn't work by the way.

Larry Scott and the Boys had already determined that there was no way Emery Air Freight could compete with UPS or Federal Express in the mail and real small parcel business.

Emery Air Freight was designed to handle heavy bulk high tonnage air freight shipments not small parcels and mail.




I'm going to make this a part II because I want to get this up here in case my computer crashes it's been doing that a little bit lately.

 

Part II

So Arthur C. Bass who is 85 years old today (he might be dead for all I know) Mr. Bass if your out there please respond and give us your side of the story.


Also:

To Any and all CF Executives who are still alive and around like Larry Scott that guy should still be kicking it, please chime in and tell us your side of the story thank you.

I've been hoping that Larry Scott would come on here and tell us his side of the story he's got to be retired by now and have nothing to do he can spend and afternoon with us.

Anyhow I'm going to give the abridged version here, this is what happened to Arthur Bass at CF.

Bass made a bunch of fancy charts turned Emery Air Freight into a terrible place to work confused the managers and customers and tried to turn Emery into a mini Federal Express.

Bass also hired a bunch of his cronies who did nothing and he ran Emery straight into the toilet trying to bring back the thing that put it into the hole in the first place which was small parcels and mail.

All this stupidity inspired a managers revolt and the CF managers rose up complained to O'Brien (Gregory Quesnel was the CF middle manager who basically said Bass was instituting his own policies which were contrasting sharply with what policies the CF board of directors had sent down from there sermon on the mound.) and the rest of the boys and CF fired Bass. Who was trying to sell out Emery Air Freight from under CF. Bass had a 6 month career at CF before he managed to tick everyone off and got him self trash canned.

Anyhow there were some other stupid things that went on at Emery, but that's the meat and potatoes of it. I'm sick of this stupid Emery Air Freight to, but for some reason they took all of CF's time, attention and money in the mid 1980s and early 1990s. Hell they should have named the book The Corporate History of Emery Air Freight with a splash of trucking. The way the book was written you would have thought CF was a failed Air Freight company that just happened to have a few trucks.

So it ended up being a big mess for Emery and Leach the board of directors who pushed for Art Brass had egg all over his face after CF's best operating man almost bankrupted the company with Emery Air Freight prior to this. Anyhow CF hired an insider to run CF Air Freight because Art Bass was a flop he didn't fit with CF corporate culture anyhow.

I missed this when I read it, but there is this hilarious quote from Larry Scott dissing Arthur Bass it's so funny I laughed out loud when I read it.

Larry Scott claimed that him self and Burger had turned Emery around and, Larry Scott categorized
Bass's Rally Cry which was "Were going to sell our way to a profit." as a dressed up policy of transporting garbage.

The small package and mail service bass wanted to sell cost Emery $18.00 per parcel.

Anyhow CF brought in some insiders and that made managers more willing to wait out the troubles at Emery.

 

Actually I laughed and thought it was funny and agree with you I was getting tired of it too! I was thinking of that part in the 1980s film End of the Line you ever see that movie? Where the president of the board of directors of the South Land Railroad goes "Air Freight! Air Freight! Air Planes! I hate those #### things! Never Liked Them!"

 

Trains are hard because railroading from a technical aspect is a mess of rules and regulations and goofy theories when it comes to spacing and signal control and really all railroading is now a days is a circus with a bunch of clowns arguing about how many feet away from the urinal your supposed to stand when taking a leak. (Sorry if that sounds crude, but I know some people who work for the trains and all it is, is rank and files arguing with dip stick managers who were also rank file employees about some rule that neither side knows how to interpret correctly.)

 

Yes the railroads transport all the major bulk materials for heavy industry and manufacturing and a lot of that stuff is just mass transport stuff that wouldn't make sense to transport by truck.