Never Stand Still

So why did the regional carriers come into existence?
Well I'll tell you!
While CF's corporate management was all hot for air freight and trying to court there bride to be which would have been the air freight business which was regarded as some kind of cool business back in the 80's. All the cool kids were doing it...air freight that is.

CF's trucking management wasn't hot for air freight and they wanted to still be the golden child of CNF.

So they did what all big companies do they looked back at there history and decided somewhere they were missing part of the pie.

So they hired a consulting firm (when you have money like CF had back in those days you could afford to hire fancy consultants that wear suits and ties and say things like "I'll have a ham sandwich for lunch on a crisont light on the grey pupon.") (Speaking of that, on a side note, I had often thought and I think I am to old now, but if I wasn't trucking or what ever I think I would work as a page on capital hill in Washington DC, I don't know why that interested me, but it did, I can run around and go "Here is your ham sandwich Mr. Sanders. Yes I can take those files over to the beauro of bureaucracy."

Anyhow back to CF and that random thought of me working on Capital Hill, however I have an extensive history of working for the government, why I cleaned the carpet at the post office when I had my carpet cleaning business. They had to get my $60.00 carpet cleaning bill approved by the Post Master General before I was allowed to do the work. I also worked for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in 2006 and I did Jury Duty last year. You can call me a regular Marsha Fudge (isn't that a great name Marsha Fudge!)

Anyhow CF enough of me blabbering about nothing like an AM radio talk show host.

So CF's trucking management hired a consulting firm and they looked at the transportation industry on the macro scale and they found out something interesting, they found out that, while CF was the undisputed long haul LTL master, CF was a flop in the short haul segment and they found most shipments only traveled about 500 miles. Well CF could certainly ship a short haul, but they were not set up to do that very well and they were big and cumbersome when it came to shipping short hauls.

If I shipped a skid of ham sandwiches from my ham sandwhich factory in Crystal City Virginia to the Capital Building in Washington D.C. CF would have most likely routed my shipment through Richfield, Ohio or some crazy place like that before shipping it to The Capital Building.

So, CF trucking management decided that, that would never do and the system was far to inefficient and it needed to be changed.

Also at the same time, deregulation happened and CF and here is the controversial part wanted to create a new regional non union carrier because according to them with deregulation non-union carriers had the edge and CF only had to look so far as to a non-union carrier from Richmond, Virginia known as Overnite to see what they were missing out on in the short haul non-union segment.


12 seconds into this video they mention "Conway" which would have been fairly new when this video was made late 1980's.

 

Isn't that the truth, look how many places have come and gone. Some we remember and others have come and gone so fast we didn't even have time to say goodby.

Now with Conway not even being around anymore the CF machine is finally dead and buried into the ground for good, they are now just a relic of the past.

 

@bzinger
Like you said it's a new era now big fat bloated CF would have been flopping around trying to survive now, while lean newer hungry carriers like Old Dominion and Saia and NEMF would have been just eating them alive.

You know someone said to me it's a new world now some of these old time union carriers had to adapt or go under. Like Holland they had to come to the realization that St.Johnsburry and CF were no longer there competition.

 

Oh it certainly helped that's for sure, I think it was like they said they wanted to bust the union and the spin off was the best way to do that.