Understanding those happy expedite carrier CEOs

Updated Mar 24, 2012

I learned today (and yesterday) a bit about what it is like to be an expedite carrier CEO. Learned by interviewing a few of them.

Diane and I woke up this morning in an retail area in Denton, Texas. We are laying over in Denton to reset our log books. Today was a day of rest. It is also the deadline day for an article I am working on for Expedite NOW magazine.

When I attended the Sylectus conference last month, I went home wondering why the expedite carrier CEO’s who were there were so happy. Really, it was remarkable. These men and women filled the room with an energetic joy the likes of which I have seen few other times in my life. Curious about that dynamic, I wrote a piece about it entitled “The Effervescent Joy of Expedite CEO’s.”

There is a long lag between when I submit a piece and when it gets published. I’ll post a link in my daily blog when it sees the light of day.

• Our hours of service reset was up for Diane at 1:00 p.m. today. Mine would follow a few hours later. But still feeling less than fully rested, we decided to stay out of service overnight and go back in tomorrow morning.

That may not be financially smart but it is safe. Dallas is not a good freight area and it would be best to go in service today. That gives us part of today and all day Friday to have some freight come our way that will get out of Dallas before the weekend begins.

But driving tired is not something we do. We generally do great in drive/sleep mode on long runs, but only if we are well rested before we begin. We could do a short run easy enough but when you are in service, you never know what kind of runs will be offered.

When you are in service, you are in service for everything, we believe. We see little benefit to us or to the agents who call us with load offers to be in service but not ready to run. You just waste the agent’s time listening to an offer and then telling him or her no because you are being selective. We don’t like telling agents no. We want them to hear yes from us.

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It is better, we think, to tell them no for a genuine good reason (like the pay is too low) than to tell them no because, while the run they are offering is a good one, we don’t feel like working today. That’s not our way. If we don’t feel like working today, we go out of service. So it is today.

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