Thompson Reuters News: Panther Expedited Services is for sale

usafk9 · May 27, 2012

...and they haven't completely left Panther.

CharlesD · May 27, 2012

jelliott said:
Also the factory sleepers allow for larger boxes. As well the class 8 straight truck has grown in popularity. The class 8 straight eats into the semi truck load similar to the sprinter eating into the straight truck.

Yep. We have a few of those class 8 trucks running and we've been able to snag a couple tractor loads because the skids were stackable. Darn good rates on those loads.

jjoerger · May 27, 2012

We have the factory 72" sleeper and a 24 foot, 12 skid box. We have been getting a lot of 12 skid loads at very good rates. Lift gate will be installed next month and we will be looking for a lift axle so we can bump our capacity up to 18,000 pounds.

jelliott said:
Also the factory sleepers allow for larger boxes. As well the class 8 straight truck has grown in popularity. The class 8 straight eats into the semi truck load similar to the sprinter eating into the straight truck.

davekc · May 28, 2012

usafk9 said:
...and they haven't completely left Panther.

That is true.

My understanding is the fleet drivers had to go to the Fed. The owner operators who purchased their truck through ES stayed with Panther verses going to Fedex.

usafk9 · May 28, 2012

davekc said:
That is true.

My understanding is the fleet drivers had to go to the Fed. The owner operators who purchased their truck through ES stayed with Panther verses going to Fedex.

Someone PM-ed me with that same thought last night, but it's not true, either. We ran into a non-same-household team about a month ago, and they were definitely just drivers. They were booted from the Fed for log falsification (got done with hometime, co-driver not ready to go yet, lead driver accepted a load from the east coast to California...decided he'd run it himself).

There probably aren't many....but there's at least one.