Never Stand Still

There all just jellous.

 

Hi guys I'll have something up tomorrow sorry for moving slow was out all day today from 3am-8pm in the evening so that's how that goes but More is coming.

 

Hi everyone, were back with another tale from the CF file, horray @bzinger was looking for a CF bedtime story and boy do we have a real snoozer for you, that's a joke.

Anyhow it was the 1980's getting towards the late 80's this book is very poorly put together in terms of time line and hard to read on that end and they jump around dates to much and there even kind of getting into the 1990s some, but still caught in the 1980s very poorly put together when it comes to dates and time line they could have really done a better job of editing on that end. Anyhow by my assertion there in the late 1980's now and CF is dealing with the fallout from deregulation which is killing other's but really not causing that much trouble for CF just making them have to work harder is all.

Anyhow while the long haul CF plodded along the regional carriers were absolutely killing it, I think it's fair to say that CF liked the regional better then they liked the core CF long haul LTL business.

Anyhow, with in the first 5 years of CCX CF had invested $64million into there company and the regionals were showing great promise. CWX Conway Western Express turned a profit by it's second year of business and the regionals were providing such great service that, customers that shipped with CCX were even promoting in there sales brochures that they shipped with CCX.

CCX so successful that the company grew by 200% after 1984 leadership was unsure if they could continue to offer the same quality service they had been known for. CCX did not do discounting instead they sold premium service at high prices. In fact one of there customers interuppted a sales call and said "Everyone in the room will tell you you're not the cheapest carrier. You cost us more money, and you won't negotiate as well, but ######### we love your service, Keep it up."

Yep only the best was shipped with CCX.

However management at CCX was prepared to keep it going and worked hard to keep the same culture in place.

"Great products don't have to be discounted" that's what they said about CCX.

CCX didn't let freight sit either because there wasn't a load oh no, if they only had 2-3 skids waiting to go somewhere they shipped that out and went and picked up more they didn't let stuff sit for days.

Con-Way was reaching the market of premium over night service they didn't screw around and also Con-Way executives didn't know how popular over night service was, until they oped the other regionals which were:
Conway Southern Express based out of Charlotte, NC which opened in 1987.


CSE covered 5 southern states had 15 service centers and 130 employees.

Then came Conway South West Express (CSW) based out of Forth Worth, Texas they had 15 terminals, 150 employees covered Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and operated 100 tractors and 200 trailers.



Now while Conway was wildly successful it had one hole and that was Penn-Yann Express yes those guys were still around and they were a total buzz kill.

They were the only union regional company which was good because it kind of kept the unions at bay however the unions did try to get in a little with the regional carriers, but they were not really successful at it. However Penn-Yann Express was facing a hard time they were not profitable and the union was a thorn in the companies side and in 1985 Robert Sands was appointed president of Penn-Yann Express Sans was a vice president for CF-CF and was appointed head of the heap in 1985 and made some big changes at Penn-Yann all of which were a huge waste. He threw out the name Penn-Yann and created CEX Conway-Eastern-Express.


Sans made more changes he got rid of Penn Yann Expresses worn out fleet of 40'-48' semi trailers and all that New York Thru way garbage Penn Yann pulled and replaced them with state of the art super capacity high octane 28' trailers. This made CEX the first company to offer doubles in the north east and this was a big deal and worked well in other markets. Sands also put together a host of other changes, for CEX, but they were all cosmetic and really didn't mean much. He was unable to make CEX turn a profit and in 1987 he stepped aside and Sal Montforte stepped in.

However CEX still didn't turn a profit and they had a very difficult time getting CEX going. Eventually Montforte went to the board and said don't expect much from CEX it isn't going to work.

The union was pretty stern in the way they were going to do things and Conway was not really ever able to break the union at CEX or negotiate them down and it was a doubled edged sward for Conway because with CEX being union the unions were not as tempted to try to get in and organize the other carriers, but at the same time CEX was the only union regional carrier and to be a regional carrier flexibility was key because the stuff has to get there pronto. CF long haul carrier had the weekends where they could make up for lost time, the regional carriers did not have those weekends.

As far as the unions at the time the unions did not like the Con-Way's (they still don't like them) but Con-Ways were small potatoes at the time and CF was busy hauling there own freight and while some paper work and legal matters were filed the big master union never really went after the Con-ways and because CF-CF was busy the union was to busy to waste it's time fighting Conway which is essentially what happened.

However CEX was having trouble and I don't what it was but the northeast was an awful market Penn Central totally flopped however, Conrail eventually was a success, but CEX never really made it up there and St. Johnsbury went out of business in the early 1990's.

While CF was doing good and Con-way was growing the big fear was that, if CF was ever to faulter the unions would try to organize Con-way.

However 1989 came and trouble with fuel prices and rate reductions caused profits and money to drop. However the company as a whole hauled a record 15.4 billion pounds of freight and brought in it's highest revenue of $2billion dollars.

The Con-Ways made a profit of $40.4million on revenue of $558.5 million. Also in 1989 CF and the book for all that time they spent on Air Freight makes no real mention except for half a sentence that in 1989 CF bought out Emery Air Freight. Very poorly put together they spent 20 pages on all that air freight stuff and then didn't even bother to talk about how they bought out Emery Air Freight in 1989. Well maybe they will get to that later will see.

Although for some reason in 1988 CF earned $3.00 per share of stock, but over night shares dropped to $0.33 cents and CF got into a big bind and problems were on the horizon and will see what they are next time.

 

Ahh yes St. Johnsbury the most famous east coast regional carrier ever. They went out of business, in 1993 around the month of June I believe.

They were top of the heap for service and I guess a great company good to work for good to ship with, but they had money problems and weren't the best competitor and couldn't weather the storm and went under in 1993, they were losing money left and right.

CEX didn't last either the north east market was not a good one it was bad juju from the late 60's to the 90's.

Long before CEX was the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central System and both those companies in the late 1960's were showing real signs of trouble most of that was due to passenger service falling out of style and New York Central merging with the Pennsylvania Railroad was a total mess, and Penn Central company having to take on the New Hartford New Haven railroad you couldn't have created a worse merger. That was all a big mess.

The north east was a hard market. It beat CEX that company wasn't really around that long compared to the other Conway regional. Of course CEX got off on the wrong foot to begin with when CF set up the regional system they made one mistake and they knew they were making the mistake when they made it and that was buying out Penn Yann Express CF should have never bought that company it was a terrible fit for there regional system and was a very bad investment for them.