I imagine shippers don't get many second chances with this type of service. You have to get it right and can't afford to make mistakes.

Old Dominion has excelled in taking on difficult freight and challenges, like delivering to Amazon, Walmart, or grocery stores. It takes extra coordination and it's time consuming but they've invested in getting the operation right and delivering on their promises, expecting to be paid for their services. If you use a cheap carrier and are going to spend $100 on that shipment, you don't know when it is going to arrive. If you want something to arrive on time and be ready for the sales floor, you need to use Old Dominion.

Since this business was so profitable within Old Dominion, did you have priority over certain assets when you needed them? How does that work within Old Dominion?

They (Old Dominion) never move anything at a loss. The difference between Old Dominion and other carriers, like ABF, is that they run their own line haul, so they can reroute drivers and dynamically manage shipments.

I imagine these large customers were quite loyal. When you were there, did you lose many customers, or how did that work?

I've walked away from millions of dollars’ worth of business because some customers insisted that we handle all their freight, even if it's unprofitable. They would say, "If you don't handle it all, you get none of the freight." So our representatives would go in and selectively choose the hard freight, the lanes we wanted, and handle those extremely well. This approach made us sticky because many other carriers couldn't handle those lanes.