The van vs sprinter thing has been a big challenge. Most of our cargo van loads would end up paying our sprinters about what our competitors pay their sprinters. Yet so many of our sprinter drivers will not take them. Customers and our sales team argues that we should just put cargo vans into the fleet to solve the problem. Not my preferred solution. But I am being put into a hard position. We can not lose customers by not fulfilling their needs. As well sales people are pushed to sell, and they are compensated to do so. Operations and the fleet not covering customers makes for unhappy customers and sales people. For the most part a van is a van. Having a larger capacity is like having a 53ft trailer vs a 48ft trailer. It creates opportunities and will produce a certain percentage of better paying loads, not all the loads will be higher. We are still talking to drivers and analyzing the data with our sales and operations team trying to determine what to do with this
I, for one, would NOT like to see regular vans added to our fleet. I have 1 custom $printer class truck that is more expensive to run than others in this class. However, my Promasters can run profitably with less... do I want to? No. But adding cargo vans is going to really mess up our $printer type trucks! I've seen it happen!
I recognize that John is saying something must be done to reduce turndowns in our $printer class. Every $printer class owner needs to realize (CLEARLY!) that this market has changed, and that we had better change to accomodate those competitive changes. Further, if Load1 has unmet customer needs, that is a very, very bad thing!
Companies that never change die. Companies that innovate survive and prosper, including everyone associated with it.
We have to innovate. Be part of the answer.