Conway going XPO branding

The tractors are more involved than the trailers. For the trucks that cross the border, they put decals on the doors for CBSA.

 

Oh sure and I believe it. When Conway bought out CFI though it seemed like they had every CFI truck with Conway on the door in no time flat and let the trailers go same when UPS bought out Overnight and MotorCargo. However I bet with the border though that is a pain. A trailer can say anything on the side it doesn't matter.

 

If they're planning to move to outside power-only contractors, then no reason to fix up trucks they're planning to sell off soon.

 

Good question. That would probably be phase 2 and obviously would be harder to implement. Fedex Ground essentially does that with their package car lease purchase program. I do see their vendors always looking for drivers on CL, so it doesn't solve reliability issues, but why would that stop some manager who realises he could be shopping for the 46' boat instead of the 36' if he outsources his shop.

 

Conway freight still has some old sterlings with CSX on the door.

 

Lol. That's the funniest rumour yet! As big as we are, there's no way any type of outside contracting can handle our volume. We will know more shortly, looks like not much is changing benefit wise.

 

I remember that rumor/fear being talked about since the acquisition, but I agree: owner-operators could not pull off what (formerly-) Con-way drivers do on a multi-nationwide scale every day. The system would fall apart. I can see certain linehaul runs being pulled by contactors, but never anything like a majority of runs, not to mention P&D--that would never work on such a scale.

Just because FedEx Ground runs on a contractor model doesn't mean a huge LTL company could do it. If that were possible, FedEx Freight would've attempted it. The same exact rumors have been going around about them since they got into LTL, but service would most likely suffer greatly, so they'll never attempt such a thing.

 

Amazon is "attempting" it right now. Do you think XPO is more concerned with competing with Fedex or Amazon, given that they are primarily a 3PL? Who of the LTL carriers will be standing in 5 years? Any bets? What if Amazon offers very good service at a lower rate? Will YRC hold up if a strong breeze hits them?

Saying this as someone who wants an LTL job, BTW, that's why I hang out here.

For an example of how Amazon works, look at how they rule cloud hosting with AWS, they have more business than Google now. And IBM. And Oracle. The last two are big names that were once invincible and are now fighting for breath. IBM is a hollow shell compared to what it once was, solid losses for years. It can't happen in LTL?

 

Why would they outsource it? As the owner of the transportation of their warehoused freight, they control much of the costs. Contracting it out, they are at the mercy of the freight market pricing. Which means right now, they might be ahead doing it because of low freight rates, but in a year or two, rates may be a lot higher costing them more than a company owned truck would.