Old Carolina Freight Carries Corporation

You had a lay down with Estes? I didn’t realize they use the bunk house I thought they went to hotels

 

Copy that. I used to see all their bobtails there at the Red Roof. I had no idea the bunkhouse was still in use. When ABF brought us out, they thought they were going to keep a large part of our customer base. Estes was our primary interline Carrier down around Virginia and the Carolinas. Estes was a non union west coast operation. The way I heard it went down was that Estes and some other smaller regional LTLs we used as interline carriers were approached by GI folks that had a pretty good insight to CFCC’s customer base and pricing and between them took many of the most profitable accounts away from ABF. The teamsters made ABF and CFCC “dovetail” the seniority lists of the two companies. So CFCC guys merged into ABF lists instead of being put at the bottom. So let’s say you had a service area serviced by an ABF barn of 30 drivers and that same area had a 20 man CFCC barn after the merger there wasn’t always enough work for 50 drivers. Let’s say it was enough work for 37 drivers, well that 37 would be a mix of CFCC and ABF. So you have guys working side by side with someone who in essence just knocked their best buddy out of his job. Didn’t always make for the most harmonious work environment and the operations suffered because of it. It was a mess, lots of bad juju in many barns. So seeing GI and Estes come together always struck me as ironic especially in instances like Toledo where Estes ends up in a facility CFCC built. Toledo was always a pretty significant breakbulk for us. In the north along with Carlisle Pennsylvania and what we called SouthChicago breakbulk

 

All in all it turned out OK but it was a mess back then. I was born and raised in Toledo and that whole fiasco ended up bouncing me to lansing Michigan for a few years then back down to far northwestern Ohio then down to where I’m at now, bout midway between Toledo and Cleveland. I was young at the time but the ones that really got screwed were the older guys with 10 or 15 years into the pension that couldn’t get on with another teamsters carrier. The unionized LTL segment was shrinking. I ended up for about 10 years with R&L but left them. At CFCC residential deliveries were almost non existent and there wasn’t a lift gate trailer or straight truck in Toledo. The residential deliveries finally did me in. 53’ lift gates delivering gun safes, pool kits, and home workout machines to places that barely took a pup and single axle got old. Pulling pneumatic bulk now and life is good.

 

I actually tried to get on with them but never got a call back about 12 years ago. Anyways good luck to you and enjoy the LTL lifestyle while it exists