TForce | Selling trailers to Saia

3 ft of extra space is not cost effective. For every set you run, you add these costs as compared to a 53Ft trailer.

1. A second trailer too register, insure, and pay maintenance.
2. A dolly too register, insure and pay maintenance.
3. A driver to pay to set up and break those sets.
4. You need 2 doors instead of one to load and unload. Adding more man-hours for both the dock and jocky operations.

Back when sets ruled the industry the longest trailer was 45", then 48' with 53' trailers, they are now obsolete.
 
3 ft of extra space is not cost effective. For every set you run, you add these costs as compared to a 53Ft trailer.

1. A second trailer too register, insure, and pay maintenance.
2. A dolly too register, insure and pay maintenance.
3. A driver to pay to set up and break those sets.
4. You need 2 doors instead of one to load and unload. Adding more man-hours for both the dock and jocky operations.

Back when sets ruled the industry the longest trailer was 45", then 48' with 53' trailers, they are now obsolete.
Visitor here. As an EOL terminal that will build SIX breakers for a break bulk, I have to agree.
 
3 ft of extra space is not cost effective. For every set you run, you add these costs as compared to a 53Ft trailer.

1. A second trailer too register, insure, and pay maintenance.
2. A dolly too register, insure and pay maintenance.
3. A driver to pay to set up and break those sets.
4. You need 2 doors instead of one to load and unload. Adding more man-hours for both the dock and jocky operations.

Back when sets ruled the industry the longest trailer was 45", then 48' with 53' trailers, they are now obsolete.
So your issue is the cost... what about freight volume, and scheduling.

I ran in sleeper teams for 8 years straight at this company, and it didnt matter what run i bid, I can't remember a time where i took two trailers with the same destination. When i did West coast to HRS, I would go thru CMS or IND or SOH, mostly MEM... Some times KAN, STL. And coming back, we ALWAYS had two destination sets. And even all the years before i ran teams, it was mostly all two destination sets.

Might it be that versatility and coustomer satisfaction outweigh the costs?

And honestly, i think it will take the same amount of time to hook the 53 as it does a set. Just one would have extra time in the break room, the other would have less.

With the automatics and no sets, we are all going to get fat and lazy.
 
Holland is one of the few regional carriers that figured out(with help from their brilliant management team) how to lose money in this market. Prior to integration with Yellow, operating well over 100.

There is nothing that Holland does that any carrier should attempt to replicate.
Clearly you don't understand the history of Holland Motor Freight. Today, they no longer exist. They have been ra*ed and pillaged by YRC and now merged into one network with Yellow, Reddaway and New Penn. Holland was a profit making powerhouse for the past 40 years, the one shining star out of all the Teamster LTL carriers still around.
 
Clearly you don't understand the history of Holland Motor Freight. Today, they no longer exist. They have been ra*ed and pillaged by YRC and now merged into one network with Yellow, Reddaway and New Penn. Holland was a profit making powerhouse for the past 40 years, the one shining star out of all the Teamster LTL carriers still around.
New Penn was too..until they were castrated
 
Well, I don't know how much this reflects on anything but it may provide some insight into the thought process of TFI in potentially changing from sets to vans.

Here in Canada, sets were popular until the 1990's when the 53' became the new norm. Linehaul is breakbulk to breakbulk, with shuttles to and from EOLs, so vans make more sense in that context. Distances between breakbulks in Canada can be pretty vast, so sleeper teams are common.

The only Canadian LTLs that have any pups are Manitoulin Transport, who bought them to run mixed traffic with OD/Reddaway pups, and TFI's own TST-CF Express who inherited them from the Canadian Freightways side of that merger. CF used theirs in conjunction with Consolidated pups till that was over, and most of the units are around 20 or more years old now and due for retirement. Most of Canada's LTL runs on vans and has, trouble-free, for decades.

FedEx Freight Canada and XPO Logistics Freight Canada also have pups, to run with their American counterparts. Their operations are comparably small vs TFI's extensive LTL network in Canada though.

If this change is happening, I would expect the above reasons are why. Sets are only necessary when you're splitting head loads and that's not needed if you change things so linehaul bypasses EOLs. It results in more loading and unloading, but it's more practical if you're shipping larger shipments.
 
Well, I don't know how much this reflects on anything but it may provide some insight into the thought process of TFI in potentially changing from sets to vans.

Here in Canada, sets were popular until the 1990's when the 53' became the new norm. Linehaul is breakbulk to breakbulk, with shuttles to and from EOLs, so vans make more sense in that context. Distances between breakbulks in Canada can be pretty vast, so sleeper teams are common.

The only Canadian LTLs that have any pups are Manitoulin Transport, who bought them to run mixed traffic with OD/Reddaway pups, and TFI's own TST-CF Express who inherited them from the Canadian Freightways side of that merger. CF used theirs in conjunction with Consolidated pups till that was over, and most of the units are around 20 or more years old now and due for retirement. Most of Canada's LTL runs on vans and has, trouble-free, for decades.

FedEx Freight Canada and XPO Logistics Freight Canada also have pups, to run with their American counterparts. Their operations are comparably small vs TFI's extensive LTL network in Canada though.

If this change is happening, I would expect the above reasons are why. Sets are only necessary when you're splitting head loads and that's not needed if you change things so linehaul bypasses EOLs. It results in more loading and unloading, but it's more practical if you're shipping larger shipments.
Thanks for the information. Glad to see our brothers in the great white north are on here
 
Thanks for the information. Glad to see our brothers in the great white north are on here
Happy to pass along what information I can. You guys at TForce Freight are the biggest branding exercise going on at TFI as far as the US goes. I no longer haul TFI's vanload LTL, but I did do so for TST intermittently between 2018 and about this time last year. I also pulled a couple of loads for QuikX (now TForce Freight Canada) in the same manner.

I migrated to dry bulk tankers last year at Contrans, another division of TFI, and it's where I've been since. I know it's easy to look at what these guys are doing and believe they're destroying your company...but they've been doing this up our way since 1994 and I've seen them turn around companies they bought from bankruptcy. It's not painless, and I can't promise everyone will be happy with the results, but they have been doing this for many years and it has made them the largest carrier in Canada.

One thing they do like to do is purchase competing carriers, apply the same methods to both, and see who becomes more profitable. What is today TST-CF Express also contains the merged remains of Kingsway Transport, Epic Express, Transport Cabano, Transport Sèlect, Daily Transport, Groupe Thibodeau, Porter Trucking, Byers Transport, Click Express, Boost-Way Transport and Pedersen Transport. The result was a long, long time coming, and this is just the OTR LTL segment. They run carriers in intermodal, both TL and LTL. They operate a lot of specialized haulers too, like tanker and flatbed. TFI is enormous and diverse, and their methods get results.

I bring this up because it's entirely possible that they might buy a different LTL carrier in a similarly financially precarious position and run the two against each other to see who becomes more profitable. I won't name any names, frankly I just work here and observe, but I think you guys could guess a name or two that fit the description above.
 
They'll be biting off way more than the can chew. Ups can easily **** away a billion and it's just 2 months profits. They will never get another deal like that again, ever.
 
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