Con-way TL Selects Qualcomm as New Communications System

By Dan Leone, Staff Reporter

This story appears in the Jan. 28 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Herb Schmidt, president of Con-way Truckload, said the carrier will replace its Geologic mobile communications equipment with Qualcomm’s OmniVision system.

Schmidt said the company decided on a fleetwide rollout of the OmniVision systems after a six-month trial, during which the company ran Qualcomm and Geologic units side-by-side in its trucks.

 “What sold us on the OmniVision system was that we had a lot of drivers who have run [Qualcomm’s] OmniTRACS system,” Schmidt said. “They felt like [OmniVision] was an upgrade.

Con-way Truckload includes the former Contract Freighters Inc.

Last fall, Qualcomm announced it had added ground-based communications systems to its flagship OmniVision product, which previously had been satellite only.

The company has since pushed the retooled OmniVision as a replacement for the older OmniTRACS system.

The switch to Qualcomm follows an announcement earlier this month that the former Contract Freighters Inc. officially had been rebranded as Con-way Truckload, five months after its acquisition by less-than-truckload carrier Con-way Inc., San Mateo, Calif.

Schmidt said the transition has “gone as well as I would have hoped,” and that driver turnover essentially has been flat since the company’s sale to Con-way.

“Any time you see mergers and acquisitions, you see fallout,” Schmidt told Transport Topics. “But our driver turnover has remained flat” year over year.

Schmidt would not elaborate on Con-way Truckload’s turnover figures, but he noted that “our trucks are full.”

Con-way Truckload has about 2,800 tractors and 8,000 trailers, according to Con-way. The company expects the truckload division to bring in about $500 million in annual revenue.

Con-way ranks No. 6 on the Transport Topics 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in the United States and Canada.