Mr. Congdon: There are several modes of trucking; we'll start with full-truckload carriers. You see a load of trucks, such as Snyder, J.B. Hunt or Werner, and every trailer that you see represents one shipper and one receiver. When you see an Old Dominion Freight or Con-way, or FedEx Freight or UPS Freight, we are in the less-than-truckload industry. If you see a pair of our 28-foot trailers going down the road, each trailer may contain 15 to 20 shipments from a variety of shippers to a variety of consignees or receivers. It gets a little deeper than that, but that's basically what LTL is. The next step down in size would be the parcel carriers, such as UPS and FedEx. We're in the middle of the market, with our shipments weighing approximately 1,200 pounds to 1,500 pounds.
TWST: Why did you choose that market segment?
Mr. Congdon: It started a long time ago. My grandparents founded the company in 1934 in Richmond, Va. They started off hauling anything that paid money and put food on the table. But even dating back to the 1930s, there has always been a segmentation of the way that freight moves, the way people sell things. You are not going to go out to the store and buy a truckload of pantyhose or a truckload of food. Nor do people who sell pantyhose or food buy by the whole truckload. They often buy in less-than-truckload quantities. That's where the LTL industry came from. It has been around for a long time, and it will continue to be around because when you consider the clothes on your back, the food on your table, the furniture you are sitting in, the computer you are sitting in front of, the telephone we are talking on, all of these products move by truck at various stages of their life cycle or their supply chain.
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