Trucking Review

When it comes to Christmas merchandise, one nation- wide retail chain’s strategy is to move it off the selves and into the back room fast, so they can stock for our spring promotions. While that helps with our average square foot revenue, it’s like managing a whole other supply chain–in reverse.

That’s why they turn to the team at YRC Reverse Logistics. With YRC, they have control over returns, not an administrative mess.

Their in-store personnel are not experts in transportation. With YRC, they don’t have to be. Their employees simply call the YRC Reverse Logistics 1-800 number where they can ask a client service representative for help creating complete and accurate bills of ladings or arranging for pickups and shipping of the merchandise to the return center.

Their supply chain is designed to move merchandise into stores. With limited space and staffing, Their warehouses are not as effective at managing returns. That’s why Their return center is really a YRC warehouse. It’s separate from the YRC service centers, and designed for reverse logistics. For example, they use its technology to handle return authorizations for credit management.

YRC gives them a better understanding of what they are spending on returns. With their reporting capabilities, they can see where returns are coming from. We can validate the returned items. And they can isolate reverse logistics transportation costs from their regular outbound shipping. Roadway and Yellow Transportation are both part of the YRC network.

Reddaway, a subsidiary of YRC Worldwide Inc. announced today the launch of a new Guaranteed Window Delivery service. With the new service offering, customers can request four levels of window precision to meet their time-specific delivery needs:

    --  Hour-specific delivery precision
        --  Single-hour window - for delivery within any one hour increment
            during normal business hours on a specific date
        --  Multi-hour window - for delivery within any multiple hour
            increment during normal business hours on a specific date
    --  Day-specific delivery precision
        --  Single-day window - for delivery during normal business hours on a
            specific date
        --  Multi-day window - for delivery during normal business hours
            within a specific multiple date range

Shipments using the new Reddaway Guaranteed Window delivery services arrive on time - not early and not late - and receive priority handling and visibility. All four levels of service are backed with the Reddaway standard money-back guarantee. Customers can use Reddaway Guaranteed Window delivery services to reduce charges backs, improve vendor scorecard performance, accommodate installation schedules, and manage their inventory turns with speed and precision.

“Guaranteed Window builds on a Reddaway portfolio that already includes guaranteed 9 a.m., noon and 3:30 p.m. service options,” commented Steve Selvig, vice president of sales and marketing for Reddaway. “Our enhanced services now offer customers more flexibility and more precise delivery times.”

“Our customers know us for our extensive next-day capabilities and our quality service,” added T.J. O’Connor, president of Reddaway. “Now, in addition to speed and reliability, customers can also enjoy day or hour precision that is often equally critical to the management of their supply chains. By using our guaranteed window services, our customers can take the guess work out of their transportation planning process.”

Reddaway, founded in 1919 and celebrating its 90th anniversary of service, is a leading provider of next-day, second-day and expedited less-than-truckload (LTL) services in the western United States and Canada. Its regional service network includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming and western Canada.

YRC Worldwide Inc., a Fortune 500 company and one of the largest transportation service providers in the world, is the holding company for a portfolio of successful brands including YRC, YRC Reimer, YRC Logistics, New Penn, Holland, Reddaway and Glen Moore. Building on the strength of its heritage brands, Yellow Transportation and Roadway, the enterprise provides global transportation services, transportation management solutions and logistics management. The portfolio of brands represents a comprehensive array of services for the shipment of industrial, commercial and retail goods domestically and internationally. Headquartered in Overland Park, Kan., YRC Worldwide employs approximately 49,000 people.

YRC Worldwide Inc. announced senior leadership appointments across a new functional organization structure. The changes will further strengthen the company’s focus on critical areas to streamline decision making while eliminating redundant efforts and costs.

The following YRC Worldwide appointments are effective immediately, reporting directly to Zollars:

Sales -YRC Worldwide welcomes John Garcia to the company as Executive Vice President and Chief Sales Officer. In this new role, Garcia will be responsible for sales strategy and results across YRC and the regional operating companies. Garcia’s consolidated sales organization will coordinate sales activities with YRC Logistics to leverage YRC Worldwide global capabilities.

Prior to joining YRC Worldwide, Garcia was the President of Sprint’s largest wireless business unit and Chief Marketing Officer for the corporation, where he was responsible for all strategic sales and marketing initiatives. Before that, Garcia held sales and marketing leadership roles at Sprint, GTE Mobilnet, AT&T Consumer Products and Southwestern Bell.

Operations - Mike Smid, President - YRC Inc. and Chief Operations Officer, will assume responsibility for the operations of all YRC Worldwide regional and national networks including his current leadership role as President of YRC Inc. In that role, Smid recently led the successful integration of the Yellow Freight and Roadway national networks.

Finance - Tim Wicks, currently Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will lead a newly consolidated organization comprised of all strategic and operational finance activities across YRC Worldwide companies. In addition, Sheila Taylor, currently Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations, will also assume the role of Treasurer reporting to Wicks.

Marketing - Greg Reid, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, will lead a consolidated marketing effort, including brand and business development initiatives, supporting all YRC Worldwide companies. In addition to Chief Marketing Officer, Reid most recently served as Executive Vice President, Enterprise Solutions Group.

Technologies and Service - Mike Naatz, Executive Vice President and Chief Information and Service Officer, assumes responsibility for YRC Worldwide Information Technology, YRC Customer Service as well as the strategic direction for the regional customer service functions. Naatz previously led and will continue to lead the enterprise-wide program management efforts initially designed to support the successful integration of Yellow and Roadway.

YRC Logistics - John Carr assumes the role of President for YRC Logistics, leading the YRC Worldwide global logistics management company focused on transportation, distribution and global services for clients. Previously, Carr was Chief Operating Officer for YRC Logistics and President for the Americas and Europe.

Dan Churay, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, and Jim Kissinger, Executive Vice President of Human Resources, remain in their current roles, reporting to Zollars.

As a part of the organizational changes, Keith Lovetro, former President, YRC Regional Transportation; Michael Rapken, former Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer; Jim Ritchie, former President of YRC Logistics; and Christina Wise, former Vice President and Treasurer will be leaving the company. Any remaining transitional activities necessary as a result of these leadership and organizational changes will be completed by the end of June.

* * * * *

YRC Worldwide Inc., a Fortune 500 company and one of the largest transportation service providers in the world, is the holding company for a portfolio of successful brands including YRC, YRC Reimer, YRC Logistics, New Penn, Holland, Reddaway and YRC Glen Moore. Building on the strength of its heritage brands, Yellow Transportation and Roadway, the enterprise provides global transportation services, transportation management solutions and logistics management. The portfolio of brands represents a comprehensive array of services for the shipment of industrial, commercial and retail goods domestically and internationally. Headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, YRC Worldwide employs approximately 49,000 people.

YRC Worldwide Inc clarified that the amendment it finalized to its revolving credit facility with its lenders has the same terms in regards to total liquidity and capacity under the facility that existed prior to yesterday’s amendment. The new amendment does give the company immediate access to the escrow funds of $73 million by means of revolver capacity that can be borrowed at any time without approval from the lenders so long as the company’s cash is below $150 million. The $150 million is a new maximum of cash and cash equivalents that was mutually agreed to by the company and the lender group and set well above the company’s average daily cash usage. The company’s total liquidity includes its cash balance in addition to the availability under its credit facilities, which in total was $242 million at May 31, 2009.

“Yesterday’s amendment reflects the continued support of our lender group as we further implement our strategic actions both operationally and financially,” said Tim Wicks , Executive Vice President and CFO of YRC Worldwide. “We now have immediate access to the escrow funds, which is a month before the original agreement, and there is not an immediate reduction to our capacity.”

The company did not pay any fees to the lender group associated with this amendment.

YRC Worldwide Inc., a Fortune 500 company and one of the largest transportation service providers in the world, is the holding company for a portfolio of successful brands including YRC, YRC Reimer, YRC Logistics, New Penn, Holland, Reddaway and YRC Glen Moore. Building on the strength of its heritage brands, Yellow Transportation and Roadway, the enterprise provides global transportation services, transportation management solutions and logistics management. The portfolio of brands represents a comprehensive array of services for the shipment of industrial, commercial and retail goods domestically and internationally. Headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, YRC Worldwide employs approximately 49,000 people.

YRC Worldwide Inc. will host a conference call for shareholders and the investment community on Thursday, July 30, beginning at 4:30pm ET, 3:30pm CT. Second quarter earnings will be released at approximately 4:15pm ET, 3:15pm CT, that same day.

Hosting the teleconference will be Bill Zollars, Chairman, President and CEO, and Tim Wicks, Executive Vice President and CFO.

YRC Worldwide Inc., a Fortune 500 company and one of the largest transportation service providers in the world, is the holding company for a portfolio of successful brands including YRC, YRC Reimer, YRC Logistics, New Penn, Holland, Reddaway and YRC Glen Moore. Building on the strength of its heritage brands, Yellow Transportation and Roadway, the enterprise provides global transportation services, transportation management solutions and logistics management. The portfolio of brands represents a comprehensive array of services for the shipment of industrial, commercial and retail goods domestically and internationally. Headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, YRC Worldwide employs approximately 43,000 people.

YRC Worldwide Inc. announced today that New Penn, one of its regional operating companies, will introduce a new and improved suite of guaranteed service offerings featuring superior reliability and value. All guaranteed service shipments are backed by the New Penn no-hassle guarantee to be complete and on-time or the invoice will automatically be reduced to zero dollars with no need for the customer to file a claim.

One of the primary enhancements is a new guaranteed by 9 a.m. service that provides customers with a level of morning precision that is typically found only with air freight or dedicated delivery carriers.

The other key enhancement is a new day-definite service offering that is guaranteed to deliver by 3:30 p.m., rather than end of day like most competitive offerings. By offering earlier guaranteed delivery times, customers are able to get goods into production or for sale to clients the same day the shipment arrives rather than traditional guaranteed delivery by 5 p.m. in which shipments often cannot be incorporated into the supply chain until the following day.

With the enhancements, the New Penn Guaranteed Precision^™ suite of award-winning service offerings now includes:

    --  Guaranteed Delivery By 9 a.m.
    --  Guaranteed Delivery By Noon
    --  Guaranteed Delivery By 3:30 p.m. (Day-Definite)
    --  Guaranteed Delivery Within a Single-Hour Window
    --  Guaranteed Delivery Within a Multi-Hour Window

YRC Worldwide Inc., a Fortune 500 company and one of the largest transportation service providers in the world, is the holding company for a portfolio of successful brands including YRC, YRC Reimer, YRC Logistics, New Penn, Holland, Reddaway and YRC Glen Moore. Building on the strength of its heritage brands, Yellow Transportation and Roadway, the enterprise provides global transportation services, transportation management solutions and logistics management. The portfolio of brands represents a comprehensive array of services for the shipment of industrial, commercial and retail goods domestically and internationally. Headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, YRC Worldwide employs approximately 49,000 people.

LTL freight carrier, R&L Carriers, which has title sponsored the New Orleans Bowl since 2006, ”signed a 3-year sponsorship renewal Monday,” according to Tammy Nunez of the New Orleans TIMES-PICAYUNE. Terms were not disclosed. New Orleans Bowl Exec Dir Billy Ferrante said, ”I think it shows we are a proven value to sponsors, especially in times when it could be an easy out for them to say ‘the economy.’ Gas prices have had a significant impact on them.” Ferrante also maintained that the “7 months of negotiations for the renewal weren’t about if R&L Carriers would renew its sponsorship, but when.” Bowl officials said that ESPN will televise the game in 2009, “staying with a Sunday night slot.” This year’s game will be played December 20 at 7:15pm CT

Key data components include annual productions by economic sector, employment by industry sectors, and in?migration and payroll by the economic sector. Besides economic production and industry employment data, this data also includes these sectors.

Commercial Movements:  A key output of the commercial movement module is the average annual growth estimates for weekday freight shipping truck traffic volumes. In order to determine truck traffic growth rates, the module synthesizes a fully disaggregated list of individual truck shipments. For each truck movement, the synthesized data include the type of vehicle (light single-unit, heavy single-unit, articulated), starting link, ending link, starting time, freight shipping, commodity hauled, and transshipment organization.  Activity-based truck tours are generated by the module using activity interaction matrices, which contain aggregate freight flows between activity centers. These flows are first translated into discrete shipments by commodity, and then combined into truck tours. The module also considers empty truck movements, distribution patterns for which are derived from the patterns for loaded vehicles.
Household Travel: The household travel module estimates specific individual passenger trips made by households during a particular representative workday for each year with information on starting link, ending link, starting time, tour mode, vehicle occupancy, utility attribute coefficients, and non-network related utility components. The process starts by assigning each household member an activity pattern for the day. The activity pattern is a listing of the sequence of activities undertaken by the household member as a series of tours made out from the home or work place.
Transportation Supply: The transportation supply module is a hybrid of macroscopic and microscopic techniques. The module computes equilibrium travel times by loading a conventional trip table to a network. These equilibrium travel times are then used in a microscopic assignment, which works at the level of individual vehicles, determining the network loadings from synthesized commercial vehicle and household travel demands.

There are some key features of economic activity models, which differentiate them from traditional four-step travel demand models.

Unlike traditional travel demand models, socioeconomic data (such as zonal employment and industrial economic activity) are not directly supplied to the model, but created internally by applying an economic/land use model. Additionally, in order to estimate economic activity, the generation and distribution of freight flows may be forecast within the economic/land use model component. The forecasts of freight trucking flows, converted into vehicle flows on modal network, are then assigned to the transportation networks.
At the end of each model run, the resulting performance on the transportation system, converted into costs, are used as feedback to the economic/land use component, which then updates the socioeconomic forecasts based on the predicted transportation system performance. The model then reruns the freight forecasting process with the new socioeconomic forecasts to reestimate modal freight trips on the transportation network. This iterative process continues until there is no further update in the socioeconomic forecasts generated by the economic/land use component of the model, from the predicted freight flows on the network and the resulting transportation system performance.

Since the performance of the freight transportation system, particularly on the highway network, is governed by its interaction with passenger vehicles, economic activity models are usually integrated with passenger travel demand forecasting models so that the predicted performance of the transportation system and the subsequent update of the socioeconomic forecasts are as accurate as possible. Next, freight shipping quote data.

Economic activity models can be thought of as the freight equivalent of the integrated economic, land use, and transportation models used in passenger travel demand modeling. Economic activity models have two main components which work together: an economic and land use model and a freight transportation demand model. Before getting into the specifics of the modeling framework, data inputs, and modeling outputs of economic activity models, it is important to understand the interrelationships between the economy, land use, and freight shipments, in order to appreciate the relevance and importance of economic activity models for freight forecasting and to develop robust models to accurately predict future freight flows. The following sections describe these interrelationships and the different ways in which these components interact with one another. Due to the complex relationships and the unique details of a regional economy considered by these models, parameters are not readily transferred and the development and application of these models can not be done quickly.