This didn't help them either.

https://www.diamondsales.com/californias-new-2020-law-limits-registration-of-older-diesel-trucks/

Intrastate deregulation brought it on. Thank your scumbag politicians for that .look what has happened to industry the government has stuck their nose in.
They destroyed trucking, airlines, telecommunications and many more .
Now they let facebook, twitter, and more just tear the country apart. Go figure.
J. D

Lots of truth to that statement. But….as times change, so do successful businesses. I guess they ran their course.

now thats a great driver

with the supply chain issues
this is weird

Yeah things change but the government seems to stick their nose in it.
Just look around ltl truck lines have been going the way of the dinosaur thanks to China . Everything comes by boat in a container we make little. Just look at the products we buy none or very little is manufactured in America.
Even the last two American brands Ford,Chevy most are assembled here and mexico with an ever increasing parts list from China. Thanks to the so called elite politicians who sold every man woman and child for greed.
JD

Airfreight, ocean freight haulers, and other LTL companies are as busy as ever…. LTL companies are scrambling to find trailers to rent because they have to much business. Trucking in general is as healthy right now as it’s been in the last 2 decades. Central closing is by their own poor business practices.

When I think of Central I think of giant fields of equipment sitting there rotting. Millions of dollars just sat to the side, never sold until it’s so dilapidated it’s worth nothing. I went to 3 of their facilities looking for a storage trailer to buy, it was an eye opener. My coworker and I left asking ourselves how they stay in biz with that much waste.

I have detailed knowledge of Central Freight's administrative operations and was saddened, but not surprised, when they pulled the plug.

The IT and Pricing departments were both very, very good. CENF used offshore freight bill entry people (Manila and Luzon); in my almost 10-year association, they were never a problem. Although a billing team in Waco would provide an additional 1% boost in entry quality, provide jobs locally, and offer a little more control, it wasn't possible to make the financial case for centralizing billing in Waco, even using best-case scenarios.

As far as IT, the programming and network teams were all Texans (with one exception). CENF was on an old, very-expensive-to-operate mainframe until around 2017. They converted to the latest version of the transportation management system used by Estes, Saia, SMT, and Averitt. The money they saved by that conversion would buy you a really, really nice bass boat...every week! Besides saving money, the new program allowed the programmers to do things users been asking for for years. Only a fool would think an offshore programming team could handle the complex and constantly changing business requirements of an LTL company! IT was not an issue in CENF's demise.

The Wilson acquisition was necessary--it gave CENF a solid coast-to-coast footprint by staking a claim in the Virginia-and-north part of the country. But it takes a lot of freight to fill 53' trailers running across the country and they never hit the volumes required for the number of states they covered and the amount of equipment they owned. The Volunteer takeover didn't do much for them other than bring in a bit of Tennessee business. And VOLT was right in the middle of the territory served by...EXLA, SAIA, and AVRT. Having three strong (and probably debt-free) competitors doesn't leave much room for a (relatively) smaller outfit to get traction in the market. VOLT was a strong intrastate carrier for years but ownership and business environment changes weakened it over the years.

Why did CENF fail? Simple: not enough freight (revenue), of course. But why? If Operations isn't strong, Sales will have to drop prices to get business. Many soon-to-retire folks in Operations were stuck in the Texas Railroad Commission days and didn't understand how the business was changed by deregulation, the explosion of information services, the emergence of the "supply chain"/"just in time" concepts, and the whole e-commerce thing. There were some excellent and highly-capable operational folks but there were too many just waiting to clock out. And while the specifics are hazy, it appears Jerry Moyes made some bad operational and personnel decisions in previous years that put CENF on a rough road. In the end, Jerry stopped pouring money into CENF and that's when it ended.

R.I.P. CENF.

Welcome aboard Erfjr! Best first post by newcomer in OT history!

I second that! I work for Old Dominion Freight Lines, and thought his post was very interesting. We hear rumors, but usually nothing more than that. That was some good info.

man
no kidding
that was informative