"Uneasy feeling, burning on my mind. I hope the end is less painful then my life."--Megadeth

As you know, I sell air freight and out-of-network solutions for the largest union truck company in the world. Though this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life, I am blessed in the fact that I do like my job. And have a passion for it. It is a challenging and interesting segment of the transporation market place.

What my department does for the company is really a side line business for the company as a whole. It's an alternate but profitable revenue stream. A necessary beast in this day and age of one stop traffic product offerings but still a side line business. Our departmental revenue goal is fourty million dollars this year. For the company as a whole that's not even half a percent of total revenue. Almost incomprehensible to me.

I was working on a shipment Friday that we could not do on our own 'express' truck. So, I got with the airline forwarder and for 2nd a.m. service on 13,500 lbs they charged be about $7,000 dollars. I am in the process of selling the shipment to the customer for about $9,000. That's quite a margin there! And the customer told us, we were by far the most inexpensive provider he had called.

The company's core service of nonguaranteed less-than-truck-load freight is a dinosaur of a product. We operate on an o/r of about 101 on it which means we lose a penny on the dollar on most shipments. But to compete with FED EX and UPS, we must. If the company can not pull profitability out of this sector, I see eventually either the union will die or the company. You can't lose and bleed money forever. The company's future relies on products such as mine and diversification to nonunion buisnesses.

Expect more shop talk posts from me in the future, and yes I am interested in what you do for a living. Feel free to talk about it all that you want.

Tonight, the world is full of possiblities even though I'm talking shop.