YRC Freight

YRC is a freight logistics company that moves LTL freight and has been shippin’ since 1924.

The big hot shot YRC Freight, “The Original LTL Carrier” wasn’t doing too hot. Up until recently, it seemed the company was tanking; losing money like blood from a gunshot. But as of late, it appears that things have been turning around for old man YRC. After some trying times, the company is back on the up and up, to reclaim it’s title as the leading freight and logistics company in North America.

The Original Origin

Way, way back in 1924 Oklahoma City entrepreneur A.J. Harrel founded the bus and taxi service which was later to be named Yellow Cab Transit & Co. Then in 1930, Roadway, founded in Akron, Ohio was purchased and then merged with the Yellow Cab & Transit Co. and transformed into what we know today as YRC Freight which now employs more than 32,000 workers.

Services

As the first and leading logistics company, YRC Freight pretty much set the standard as to what services are necessary for moving large volume items either nationally or internationally. Their customers have a wide assortment of services available to suit their particular shipping needs.

• Standard- utilizing North American networks with over 250 terminals for drop offs and exchanges.
• Accelerated- transit with increased speed for more urgent shipments, this package offers the same coverage as the standard. The company ships 24/7 and on weekends, so the consumer need not worry about the lag time of non-business days.
• Time Critical- extremely urgent shipments with delivery windows as tight as one hour. That’s hard to come by in the LTL world.
• National LTL- delivering multiple shipments from one origin to multiple destinations, with the routes formulated for all of the packages to reach their destinations at the same time (great for franchises and retail)
• Domestic Ocean- services American territories separate from the mainland; Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands. Offering LCL and FCL freight between key markets using one carrier from the beginning to the end of shipment (rare these days). They monitor and take care of matters such as consolidation, removing delays, and the changes from third-party consolidators.
• Mexico- YRC has a team of people who coordinate for border transit, ensuring time critical service, and door to door visibility in terms of tracking; all while using the same invoice so that the details are relatively straight forward for the consumer.
• Canada- servicing more than 30,000 international customers.
• Exhibit/ Tradeshow Shipping- a packaged price for company’s who frequent tradeshows.
• Retail- similar to the National LTL service, ensuring that all retail products are shipped from the headquarters, and transported to multiple destinations.
• Government- shipping large items for governmental matters.
• Freezer Service- shipments for temperate sensitive items in a controlled environment.
• Hazardous Materials- safe transit of unsafe materials.
• Sealed Trailer- airtight containers for easily oxidized or perishable items.
• Spot Volume- the rental of cargo carriers based on size rather than weight; very efficient and cost effective method of moving goods.
• White Glove- the delivery workers wear white gloves to reduce the risk of smudging on your brand new items.
• Reverse Logistics- carefully calculated routes to enhance environmental focus and efficiency.
• Multi-Day Window- for flexible shipping.

The Rise and Fall

Actually it’s more like the fall and rise? Ah, semantics! But basically, the company was losing money at an alarming rate. In 2009, YRC Freight made the decision to exchange their equity to pay their debts. This resulted in the stock shares rising from 62 million to 99 million. Sounds pretty great right? Wrong. The company lost $622 million that year. The next year, in 2010 they lost $326 million, and in 2011 they lost another whopping $409 million. The company’s net worth was now in the negatives. It all seemed pretty hopeless. But then things started to turn around.

The unionized company began to see a pattern, that their business seemed to be moderately seasonal, with business picking up in the warmer months. Harnessing this knowledge, they began to alter their business strategy to try and save the company. Their efforts were not all for not. In 2014, YRC reported a revenue of $5.1 billion, taking the company’s net worth out of the negative spectrum. They’d crawled out of the trenches after their epic downfall, and the company was profitable again.

Environment

As you may have noticed, as much as I like to focus on the corporate agenda, I more-so like to zero in on the environmental and sustainable efforts of large and influential corporations. With great power comes great responsibility, and the need for global consciousness is at an all time high. YRC has been making moves in the green direction. They have established their own agenda that has been titled:

Destination Green

• Won the Smartway Environmental Excellence Award.
• Limits truck speeds to 62/63 mph.
• Funding of hotel rooms for drives to omit overnight parking and idling.
• Intermodal services with railway providers (reducing the need for trucks).
• Setting limit of daily idling with ‘over the road’ operations.
• Environmentally efficient longer combination vehicles.
• Tire inflation and monitoring programs.
• Eliminating “empty miles” with careful logistics.
• Car pooling when possible to reduce the number of trucks on the road.
• NOx particle matter reduction devices.
• They are currently in the process of testing to electric/diesel hybrids.
• Fuel efficient tires, provide for a 4% increase in fuel efficiency.
• Recycling of aluminum, steel , unusable cardboard, office paper, oil antifreeze, cleaning solutions, tires, batteries, etc.
• Recycling of old light bulb fixtures, replace with low wattage fixtures.

Peanut Gallery

It is I! The peanut gallery! But I will not charge you 5 cents for my advice. Instead I will tell you, it seems like this company has all of their ducks in a row. Their prices are a bit up there, but they have great FAKs. I have found that their pricing since January 2017 has been considerably better than the previous 4 years. Remember, you sometimes will pay more for quality, I believe this is one of those times. The fact that the company has faltered can be a bit daunting to a prospective consumer; but if they can rebuild what was lost after their landslide of a loss then they can handle your shipments. My interaction and confidence level would not lend me to have shaky knees with YRC