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It can be very entertaining and satisfying to speculate about what is on management's mind or about what someone was thinking or what the motives are. Entertaining and satisfying yes, productive no. I have spent very little time thinking or writing about why our carrier is doing what it is...

Part of what makes a CR-unit a CR-unit is 12 feet of space in the box for cargo. That's six skids. FDCC requires a 14 foot box on C and CR-units, reasoning that the front two feet is used for freight handling equipment storage. Our box is 16 feet long inside diminsion. If needed, we could use...

Tiny FDCC was once a self-standing operating company within the larger FedEx Corporation. That changed some time ago when FDCC became a subsidiary of FedEx Freight, which is a much larger operating company within the FedEx Corporation. The entity buying the trailers is FedEx Custom Critical. I...

I commend your discipline. Diane and I are on our way back east under load and will do the same as you going forward; namely, decline load offers that take us west unless we are pre-dispatched to return (though few if any such pre-dispatches are expected). Thinking ahead, it is going to be...

Not in this particular case with this particular carrier. Diane and I have never had trouble moving in and out of California or making good money while we were there with our six-skid truck. What changed was not the freight or the size of the loads. What changed was the introduction of...

Delivered a week ago Saturday near Los Angeles. It took nine days to get a load out. We did one 400 mile run and two short runs (14 and 34 load miles) in California in those nine days. A handful of load offers were received. The good ones went to other trucks (many there, all wanting freight)...

If you put some seats in that Sprinter of yours, you could make good money running a shuttle service for the numerous straight-truck drivers that spend days and days at the Ontario TA with little freight to haul. ;)

You state it well. Kindly note that for nearly eight years Diane and I have had great pride in our carrier and in the work we do. But for those same eight years, the money was good. Had the good money not been there, we would not have been there either. Just this week, for the first time...

I'm done talking about this for a while. On to other interests.

TRANSPARENCY!!!! That's what is needed at FedEx Custom Critical, transparency. I have been talking to other carriers and, conditioned over eight years by FDCC to expect something different, am amazed to be receiving straight answers to reasonable questions. How big is your fleet size? Answer...

So, if the pay is diminished and the pride in the brand is gone, why do you stay? What keeps you at FDCC? I ask because I am looking for reasons to stay.

California Update: Diane and I have been in CA since last Saturday morning (nine days now). A nice, cross-country run took us out here. The next run took us to the San Francisco area at OK pay, OK but not great. We then did two short runs in the Bay Area. In the four express centers (San...

As all other truckers have done before GPS became available, Diane and I used paper maps to navigate. We now rely on GPS (and Google Maps) but can revert to paper maps when necesssary. We still carry a road atlas and it gets used a few times a month to do checks that can be more quickly or...

Or it might have been something as simple as the FDCC contractor tractor broke down and with all others busy or otherwise unavailable, a local hauler was tapped to finish the run. We were at a FedEx facility in California the other day and saw a Custom Critical dry van parked there among all...

I am not aware of any FDCC-owned trailers doing LTL work and nothing I learned in various conversations suggested that they are. It has always been the case that some FDCC customers will book one shipment from one customer that may have multiple pick-ups or multiple stops but that freight...

If you left three times, you also entered three times. Why would you enter and then leave, enter again and leave, and enter a third time and leave? What prompted the moves?

We have had one roadside inspection since our EOBR was installed. It was a Level 3. We passed. The officer was good natured but took more time looking at our electronic logs than any officer has taken looking at our paper logs on a Level 3. I think it was because he was curious about the device...

Just curious. If you have had a rear door sensor installed when your new data logger was installed (TVAL trucks), have you had any alarms? We had our first one yesterday. "WARNING THE REAR DOORS HAVE BEEN OPENED! PLEASE DETERMINE THE CAUSE AND NOTIFY DISPATCH." Our response: While we have had...

There was a bit of excitement at the truck stop this morning. A driver tried to force his way into a parking spot and had not a driver in the adjacent spot laid on his air horn, a crash would have happened for sure. The errant driver continued to have problems so the driver of the parked truck...

Thank you for your reply. I asked for alternative points of view and that is exactly what you provided. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yes, we have considered the possibility that FDCC might have lost a customer or two on the west coast, or that current customers that utilize our type of truck...