The general concensus is that since FedEx established that, help me out on this, I believe they call it the expedited freight network, loads have taken a dive,(check the vru half the loads are going out of areas such as Dallas, Houston, Memphis, Pittsburgh as they did before the program started. Agents have to give customers all shipping options when they call in to have freight picked up, FedEx Freight, CC, Ground, Express, Air....you get the picture. So if a shipper calls in believing he wants to have a C.C truck to show up, he may change his mind when the agent says well, we could have that there just 12 hours later if you go with FedEx Freight and it will save you X amount of dollars.
This is well planned on FedEx's part because it keeps more customers in their books, as opposed to going to other less expensive expediting companies, but it is not doing us a whole lot of good. Its sort of like "we will give you our rate and those of our competiters", except in this case they are one of the same. We stand to lose more loads then we will gain through this procedure because we are the most expensive mode of shipment.(aside from air expedite)
Of course I could be wrong, but it makes since as to why there has been a decline in freight, i'm hearing this from other drivers and o/op's also. Just something to chew on, let me know if you agree.