Charlie Ring,
TDA President,
From the President

In the last few weeks Pan Western Corporation has seen a significant increase in demand for our transloading services and an even greater  demand for our trucking services.  My first thought with this demand was, “What a great sales staff I have.” It is true, I do think I have a very good sales staff, but as I get around speaking to customers and competition, there has been a shortage of flatbed equipment all over the 11 Western states and some accounts that this shortage extends at least to the Mississippi River Valley.

My first response was, “WOW, Great, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” Having been burnt in the past by this gift horse, where I have staffed and capitalized to handle this business thinking it was going to be on-going and that I was immune to the economy, I am taking a much more  cautious approach.  In just a couple of weeks of research I have found some surface issues that I wanted to share with you in hopes that you would in-turn share with us what you are finding.  I would like to then publish it in the RELAY to help us all out, because, in all cases if you’re transloading, you’re dealing with either your own trucks or someone else’s.

1.  The group of smaller regional carriers had a real hit with the economy.  I have been able to verify that in the last 8-9 months some 26 carriers who had a fleet of 10-30 have gone out of business along the I-15 route from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City.  Remember these 400 miles comprise a lot of desolation.

2.  This puts a lot of drivers available in a very small market.  However now that insurance companies and good trucking companies are starting to use the CSA 2010 as a hiring measure, a huge portion of those drivers are either not qualified through our insurance coverage (which I don’t want) or they never get past the point of running the CSA.  We took in 42 applications and found 7 that I could pre-qualify to the insurance company and only 4 of them were approved.

So if there is an upswing in  business in the 11 Western states, the carrier base is shrinking and the driver pool is getting tighter.  If you could send me your experiences in this matter I would love  to share them with the rest of the TDA members.

Sincerely,

Charlie Ring
PAN WESTERN