Mike's Book Club: JB Hunt The Long Haul to Success

This was at Falcon's Height in 2005-2006 on the Ohio Turnpike. Falcon was pretty much a giant conveyor belt from East Ohio to West Ohio.

 

Actually in the 1980s J

Hi thanks for reading,
Don't miss understand me, no no OTR is not going to go anywhere.

What I'm talking about are specific companies and how they have changed over the years. There will always be some OTR irregular route trucking.

However these bigger companies and JB Hunt was always ahead of the curve on this, compared to Schneider and especially Werner, the 1980s made OTR irregular route running a ###### market and JB Hunt realized you needed to have large fleets pooled in fairly close proximity to shippers to meet shipper demands.

Freight brokers and owner operators and ###### market attitudes while they were cheap prices they proved unreliable. Big name brand places didn't want to do business with those companies so it was much easier for big name brand places to do business with JB Hunt or Schneider.

What happened was these companies demanded specialized service and JB Hunt being the leader of the group for sure in this area was the first to really start dedicating equipment and drivers to certain accounts.

The market trend was and still was to provide high service at cheap price. JB Hunt found out the only real way to do that was to do what really put them on the map and that was to ship trailers and containers by rail.

I don't know if you read my thread Never Stand Still, but CF and JB Hunt while different companies and different jobs both recognized that you had to be bigger then your own little corner of the world.

Larry Scott who was the best operating man at CF
got CF into the air freight business it was a disaster for CF almost drove them bankrupt, but the idea was CF could now serve the world.

JB Hunt in the late 1980s partnered with Santa Fe (who's now gone) and they started shipping trailers on rail cars. JB Hunt has for the most eliminated there irregular OTR running. It's never going to be totally gone, but they realized that there were 2 ways to skin a cat. Faster quick release shipments went out by truck also the customer had to pay more for that.

However if the customer was willing to take a little bit of a hit in terms of transit times, by maybe a day or two then JB Hunt could have those loads put on a train and the train would take 100 trailers east will say and the day cab guys would pick those up and take them where ever. Really I think most Intermodal containers really only go no more then 500 miles from the rail yard.

I'll address this in another post, but Falcon's turn pike doubles has nothing to do with the industry as a whole Falcon's eggs were all in one basket and they ran pretty much one lane serving one industry Falcon only had 3 customers Ford, GM and Toyota. When the auto industry went into contraction in 2008 so did Falcon. Which is why you don't see Falcon pulling turnpike doubles as much any more not really. Once in a while you'll still see there flatbeds pulling doubles, but there 48' dry van doubles operation is pretty much cooked.

Look if you still want to do OTR those companies are still around and will be happy to take you. Call Werner and tell them you want to be put on OTR irregular route they will welcome you with open arms.

Call US Xpress tell them the same thing. They will welcome you with open arms.

Prime Inc. There mostly/all refrigerated freight they don't have the width and depth of a company like JB Hunt call them I've never seen a Prime Inc day cab there pretty much a long hauler call them once again they will also Welcome you with open arms.

JB Hunt and Schneider were fierce direct competitors. Werner could also be put in there, but Werner to me doesn't have the width and depth of Schneider and JB.

Were getting into my next post which was JB Hunt into the 1980s, JB Hunt always kind of realized you had to be innovative and Hunt knew that pretty much in order to keep an advantage you had to do something different and they figured out that there was money to be made in shorter hauls and more specialized stuff.

Will OTR shrink as far as manufacture to distribution warehouse. No that'll be okay.

Now will OTR shrink as far as distribution center to retail outlet store. Yes, that part of OTR is in trouble. Go read the Wal-Mart section Wal-Marts private fleet is in total contraction as retail shopping goes down the tube so will big tractor trailer trucks going to retail stores.

Why do you think JB Hunt and Schneider have all started getting into the 28' trailer and straight truck business? Because that's the future. Sounds kind of strange, but heavy consumerism as far as warehouse to retail store is done. When was the last time they built an enclosed shopping mall in your town? That era is over 70's, 80's and 1990's era stuff is over.

The new ecommerce trend is someone buys a couch off the internet and in a day or 2 if it's available that couch is there at the persons front door.

I'll draw a picture because this is important describing how it works. This is all evident over the past months or so I've seen Chinatown on here talking a lot about Schneiders straight truck fleet that's growing for final mile deliveries.

Of course Erb from Canada already started with the straight trucks before Schneider and JB Hunt did. Erb was the first major trucking company to start using sleeper cab straight trucks for multi state runs. Which is common in the food industry and the reason for this, is because certain suppliers like Sysco, GFS, whoever carry items that are special order for certain customers, and not from the general stock pile, they don't need a 53' trailer load of a certain kind of oil that only 3 people buy. They only need 2 pallets Erb figured out they could consolidate shipments into smaller trucks. But were not going to get into food and perishable logistics right now that's a whole other topic.

I hoped that answered some of your question.

 

Alright stay tuned were into the 1980s next.

Will talk about
JB Hunts growth
JB Hunt standardizing the fleet
55 miles an hour
and initial IPO and the sale of Hunt Rice Hul.

 

However I have to go eat dinner so I'll see you when I get back.

 

Also most major truck companies don't run turn pike doubles because they are legal only on toll roads in certain states. The only people who run those things are private fleets and companies that specialize in one thing like auto parts from Detroit to Lordstown, Ohio.

Or Sherwin-Williams hauling paint from there plant in Nevada to the warehouse also down the road in Nevada. That's when turn pike doubles are used. If your shipping that much then you are going to be shipping via rail. Turn pikers are only used when it's time sensitive large shipments that are to short for rail freight to be efficient.

Anything else when you start dealing with multiple truck loads that need to leave a shipper at the same time and are going to the same place is going to be put on the rail.

 

Oh sure no trouble at all. JB Hunt's final mile service:

is bigger then Schneider's. Schneider's final mile stuff is only in certain city's and is fairly new.