Lawrence,
Thanks for the encouragement but.....
this is a different economy, it is different times with a different industry. We now face challenges that were not there two years ago and many won't survive or better put shouldn't survive.
Many companies, like FedEx have changed their attitude and position within the market to capture more revenue and looking over the horizon to see what they can do if the economy does continue a downturn.
As much as I would like to think we are on the front lines of any recovery, for the most part we are not. We have a long way to go and what may seem to be a recovery may be a calm before the storm. What seems to be picking up may be the slack taken up by money flowing or trickling to get things done.
The fact that trucking has change, expediting regardless what most think is not exclusive expediting anymore and there more of the blurring of the lines between the mainstream trucking and what we used to call expediting.
As moose said, it is too easy to get into. Moose put it rather accurately about the ease of this which for the rest of us causes concern when fleets are expanding while they should be contracting so to get more trucks off the road and rates pushed higher. The carriers change their percentages, move to nickel and dime the contractor and make it look like it costs them so much money to run the business because the contractor is there.
Customer service? You have to learn what it means and if you don't have the standards to begin with, then you can never give it. I mean that yea customer service is somewhat a part of this but if you tolerate the cr*p at places you eat, buy parts at, or when things are done at your house and you accept bad customer service (like bad attitudes or cr*ppy food) as normal, then you can't deliver. Because we have that blurring of that fine line in the industry, most loads we do are just loads - get the truck backed up, drop the ramp, get it loaded, do the paper work and get out of there to deliver. Most of the time the shipper doesn't care what truck you are using, whether it has chrome lug nut covers or lights that flash, he wants his stuff moved and cheaply. This of course excludes the elite in the fleet, WG and Elite, they are a different breed and not what I can ever consider being part of the thousands of common expediters out there. Is there room for
Customer service? Yes always and it comes down to intgerity and quality of the person, not the carrier.
