Re: Fed x expedite going down ?
SHHHHHHHHH,the more trucks that leave for GREENER fields.The better i run.
I get your meaning, I think, but for new people reading the forum, let me add this.
Expedite carriers are constantly balancing their fleet sizes and customer needs.
Carriers want to have enough trucks available at all times to respond when customers call. If a customer calls and the carrier does not have an available truck, the customer does not wait on the carrier. The customer calls another company. Or, the carrier may call another company to cover the load while trying also to maintain the customer relationship.
At the same time, carriers don't want to have more trucks then they need. If there is not enough freight to go around, contractors will die on the vine and new ones will have to be recruited, at great expense, to replace them.
Some expediters believe that it costs a carrier nothing to add and keep additional trucks in the fleet and that it suits carriers just fine to keep the number high. If that were true, every carrier would have hundreds more trucks than they need so every load could be covered and every customer could be served every time. But it is not true, which explains the fluctuating fleet size as seasons and market conditions change.
If not a specific number, most carriers have a good sense of the size of fleet they want to have and when. If one, two or ten contractors leave, the carrier will bring more in to replace them if their fleet size plan calls for it.
If the intent is to shrink the fleet a bit, the departure of ten contractors would be welcomed and they would not be replaced. But if a smaller fleet was needed, the expectation would be for less freight to haul fleet wide, and ideally, enough freight would remain for the remaining contractors to do well.
A friend of mine who left a carrier after many years of proud and successful service put it this way. "Imagine a bucket of water. Put your arm into it. Pull your arm out and look at the bucket again. That is the effect my leaving the company will have when I go."
Notice that news just broke that 30 trucks are being moved from Express-1 to FedEx CC. Look at both companies today. Look at them a month from now. While individual expediters will be affected, not much will change in the grand scheme of things at the carrier level because the lettering changed on those 30 trucks.
teamjdw suggested above that when one truck leaves, it means more freight for him. Would it also mean that when 30 trucks come into the fleet it means less freight for teamjdw? I dont' think so.
Again, carriers are constantly balancing their fleet sizes to customer needs. Trucks come into and leave the fleet for all kinds of reasons. It's not about one contractor leaving here or going there. It's not even about 30 trucks coming on board. It's about the carrier managing its fleet size as the season and market conditions dictate.
Finally, fleet size management is not precise. It is sloppy. If a carrier decides 100 more trucks will be needed for the upcoming busy season, they are not brought on board by a flick of a switch. It takes time to find and and bring them in.
And once they are nicely on board, a big customer may lose a big order and all of a sudden the 50 shipments a week that prompted a fleet expansion disappear into thin air. Now the task may be to shrink the fleet by 50 trucks or to increase sales efforts elsewhere to somehow make something back from the recruiting money just spent.
At all carriers, there are people who deal with these challenges every day. It's not a job I would want.