The Effervescent Joy of Expedite CEO's

[moose]

O'h am not worry about XPO, you'll do just fine holding.
what im getting at is that they shifting their business from hauling freight to brokering it.
well why not, that 1st Q report show they do just fine heading in that same direction.
probably increase their market impact by doing so.
shipper happy.
broker happy.
drivers ?, O/O ? no word.
please do remind us what the name on the side of an expedite truck used for ?
we are all hauling for the same guy anyway. no-buddy have 'costumers' anymore.
and you wonder why they so happy in the reception room ? they invented a tool that'll take the freight from under the O/O wheels, and place it on the cheapest hauler they can find, regardless of a company name.

 

[moose]

because BigCat, pretty fast it's becomes a price shopping ordeal, have nothing to do with available trucks, and a lot to do with keeping the costumer happy, and laughing all the way to the bank, on the drivers expense.
why pay 'your' drivers it's contract rate, when you can keep that shipper happy, while paying another carrier less then you would've paid your 'own' truck.
so yes, it dose work like that.
when you go to Laredo, your competition are NOT your carrier truck, it's have nothing to do with how many trucks your 'carrier' have in that area, nor how many 'costumers' or 'shippers' they have. and a lot to do with the rigs counts at the TA+J parking lot.
(gee,i hope no-ones parked at the Pilot).

 

[CharlesD]

Except in most cases a partner carrier costs more than a contractor. After all, that partner is a carrier as well with contracted drivers running for a certain rate. They're not going to take a load for less than their driver would do it for. If someone calls me to move a load and I have a truck in the area, there is no incentive for me to call a partner who's going to charge me more than I would pay the contractor, and it would be stupid to keep a contractor sitting since without them I wouldn't have a business.

 

[moose]

well why not ?
your (not you) drivers got there at a certen rate. but there are 3 vocational expediters that'll take the freight just for the heck of it.
2 that will take it at a loosing rate just to make it home.
one that needs to get to a wedding.
17 trucks that got there at a premium rate and can average a load up.
34 with paid for equipment .
199 that already made their money for the month.
& 299 revolving doors spinners, that just like to get home so they can declare bankruptcy.
that system and alike, will make sure the shippers representatives find those trucks.

 

[ATeam]

O'h am not worry about XPO, you'll do just fine holding.
what im getting at is that they shifting their business from hauling freight to brokering it.

Express-1 was purchased by Bradly Jacobs in September, 2011. The company today consists of the same three divisions it did before the buyout, though they are now organized under the XPO Logistics name. The subsidiary companies are: Express-1, Inc. (expedited surface transportation), Concert Group Logistics, Inc. (domestic and international freight forwarding) and Bounce Logistics, Inc. (truckload brokerage).

Jacob's intent is to grow XPO Logistics into a multi-billion dollar company in five years through a combination of cold starts and acquisitions and growth. While the primary emphasis for growth is on the brokerage side, Express-1 has a growth mission too.

If you consolidated every expediting company in the U.S. and Canada into a single entity, you would not have a multi-billion dollar company. XPO's growth will come primarily from the brokerage and freight forwarding side. Yet XPO is hanging on to Express-1 and integrating it into XPO's systems and Express-1's systems into XPO's.

In an interview with me, Jacobs and Express-1 president John Curry discussed their plans for growing Express-1 and explained how the sister companies can help get freight for Express-1 drivers to haul.

That article is in the Expedite NOW/ExpeditersOnline pipeline to be published at a later date. For now, note that Express-1 has a growth agenda and people there expect growth to be enhanced by improved working relationships with sister companies.

(Full Disclosure: Diane and I own shares of XPO.)

 

[davekc]

Except in most cases a partner carrier costs more than a contractor. After all, that partner is a carrier as well with contracted drivers running for a certain rate. They're not going to take a load for less than their driver would do it for. If someone calls me to move a load and I have a truck in the area, there is no incentive for me to call a partner who's going to charge me more than I would pay the contractor, and it would be stupid to keep a contractor sitting since without them I wouldn't have a business.

Might question part of this. There is partner carriers running for less than a carriers own drivers contracted rate. Happen alot actually. Some are trying to move trucks out or to a certain area.
Those bottom feeders will take a load at times for half the rate all in. Nameless carriers love this because it becomes quite the profit center.

As for carriers leaving a truck sitting, that happens all the time. Think of a carrier that is notorious for putting "a lock" on a truck. That is by design in case a particular customer calls. The bad news is they seldom tell the driver and really don't want them to know. Just let them rot, but we the carrier have a truck "just in case".

 

[Steady Eddie]

Express-1 was purchased by Bradly Jacobs in September, 2011. The company today consists of the same three divisions it did before the buyout, though they are now organized under the XPO Logistics name. The subsidiary companies are: Express-1, Inc. (expedited surface transportation), Concert Group Logistics, Inc. (domestic and international freight forwarding) and Bounce Logistics, Inc. (truckload brokerage).

You forgot one.

Continental Freight Brokers

With getting into the brokerage, who has the trucks under their compannies to cover the loads?


Express-1

You have stock in XPO- were you not on the share holders conf. call??

 

[turritrans]

Might question part of this. There is partner carriers running for less than a carriers own drivers contracted rate. Happen alot actually. Some are trying to move trucks out or to a certain area.
Those bottom feeders will take a load at times for half the rate all in. Nameless carriers love this because it becomes quite the profit center.

As for carriers leaving a truck sitting, that happens all the time. Think of a carrier that is notorious for putting "a lock" on a truck. That is by design in case a particular customer calls. The bad news is they seldom tell the driver and really don't want them to know. Just let them rot, but we the carrier have a truck "just in case".

There may be some carriers that haul for less then we pay our ops, but you get what you pay for. I'd rather pay a good wage and know it gets there. There are A lot of carriers, but few provide good service.

Point being as John and Charles said, it's not about making big money to broker a load as much as keeping the customer calling in load opportunities for our trucks. In most cases( not all companies) But with my company freight always goes on the trucks first and brokered only if we do not have capacity. If I can make a small profit and service the client great, if I take a small loss and service the client, I'll do that too.

Moose made a good point, there are some companies that will broker a load over putting freight on an op if it makes more money, but there are just as many companies that understand feeding the ops first and foremost is in the best interest of keeping quality drivers. I'd rather have a slow nickel then a fast dime. Some companies are purely profit driven, that is true... But not all!

 

[ATeam]

You forgot one.

Continental Freight Brokers

With getting into the brokerage, who has the trucks under their compannies to cover the loads?


Express-1

You have stock in XPO- were you not on the share holders conf. call??

I also have a one-truck expedite business. Diane and I were under load and busy with freight at the time.

What does Continental Freight Brokers have to do with XPO?

 

[Steady Eddie]

I also have a one-truck expedite business. Diane and I were under load and busy with freight at the time.

What does Continental Freight Brokers have to do with XPO?

They are now part of the XPO family.

 

[blizzard2014]

As of some months back Sylectus stopped taking on new companies that are brokers only. You have to actually be a carrier now to get onto Sylectus. The site is like charles said a way to share resources with other carriers and help one another move trucks while covering your customer base. There are a lot of companies on Sylectus that are not big like Panther "they can't just take every single load offered to them by their customers automatically just because they have 20 trucks sitting in every major city!" Some small to mid-sized carriers need to be able to gain access to a larger shipping base and the only way to do that is to have more capacity.

For instance I had a friend who found a customer that was shipping out 4 loads a day. The guy agreed to give him some cargo vans at 1.50 a mile. The only problem was that the customer wanted my friend to move every load that he had, and when he turned loads down because he does not have broker authority, they stopped calling him. He had to turn down a lot of the loads because he could not legally broker them out to partner carriers. That shipper simply went back to a bigger carrier who had the capacity to move every expedite load that they had.

A lot of shippers don't want to spend their day on the phone calling around trying to find someone to move their freight. Now I know that some shippers play games and call multiple carriers trying to get a discount, but for the most part they want to make one phone call and have the broker or carrier coordinate the shipment for them. Shippers are paying carriers and brokers to pick up, move, track, and deliver freight for them so that they can focus on more important aspects of their business.

Now all that being said, there are some companies that misuse Sylectus. They get loads from other third party logistics companies and then double broker them back out to the smaller companies. I hate to see this happen, but it is not generally the norm for Sylectus. I think Sylectus offers a invaluable resource for both carriers and drivers alike. I will continue to use their system for as long as I remain in business. I think you guys need to step back and realize that some of the freight you all are running is coming from the partnerships that your company has made with other carriers.

 

[x06col]

well why not ?
your (not you) drivers got there at a certen rate. but there are 3 vocational expediters that'll take the freight just for the heck of it.
2 that will take it at a loosing rate just to make it home.
one that needs to get to a wedding.
17 trucks that got there at a premium rate and can average a load up.
34 with paid for equipment .
199 that already made their money for the month.
& 299 revolving doors spinners, that just like to get home so they can declare bankruptcy.
that system and alike, will make sure the shippers representatives find those trucks.

The 299 category you type about.....there are many reasons they got there. Mostly by providing poor service, or, just have a propensity to do stupid stuff. Then, you have the whiners, that you are not sure how they react with customers. Every Carrier ends up with these types, and it does not take long to identify them. Betcha a dollah to a donut you as a Carrier would attempt to find alternative resources in some cases also. Then there are the "fat cats" and their short sighted financial outlook whom have already made their money for the {month}, if I have a load offered to me, i'm going to do my very best not to let it sit on the dock. There are very good reasons why Sylectus and the Alliance came to be.......to help fix the help problem everyone has these days.