The huge digital finger on Yellow Corp.’s annual report to shareholders makes a perfect point about the state of trucking in 1999: It was the year of the Internet.
Yellow Corp.
Yellow Corp. is one of several trucking companies to use electronic images to illustrate the importance of information technology to the future of its business.
The ubiquitous, ever-growing World Wide Web is not just changing the way companies process information and communicate with customers and suppliers, it’s causing trucking firms to rethink their business strategies.
A little more than a year ago, for example, Celadon Group was bogged down in negotiations to sell its business to a New York investment firm. The deal fell through after rising interest rates forced Bankers Trust to withdraw its backing.
Worse still, sinking oil prices in late 1998 and early 1999 — when the national average price of diesel at the pump was under $1 a gallon — had undermined the value of fuel hedges and forced the Indianapolis-based truckload carrier to write-off nearly $1 million in losses on fuel contracts. Then in February, Celadon Chairman Stephen Russell took a flier on TruckersCo-op.com, an Internet venture in which small trucking companies sign up for discounts on fuel, tires, trailers, insurance and other supplies.
For the full story, see the July 31 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.
