Con-Way adds regional trucking from Joplin center

After an 18-month pilot program, Con-way Truckload has launched a regional service that dispatches out of its Joplin office, officials said this morning.

Con-way Truckload Regional handles short-haul truckload shipments of less than 600 miles, including cartage services for truckload shipments of less than 100 miles, a news release said.

The pilot program in Joplin provided short-haul service in an 11-state region. By the end of the year, the company plans to have 325 trucks dedicated to the new offering with another 300 trucks coming in 2010. The goal is to have 1,000 trucks dedicated to the service in regions nationwide by 2011, the release said. Also planned are drayage services in which Con-Way would provide only the power unit and a driver to move a customer's goods and equipment.

"This is the ideal time for us to enter the regional, cartage and drayage business," said Herb Schmidt, president of Con-way Truckload, a subsidiary of California-based Con-way Inc. (NYSE: CNW), a $5 billion long-haul freight transportation and global logistics company, in a news release. "About 70 percent of the freight in the transportation market travels less than 550 miles, and it's a segment that tends to stay healthy even during challenging economic conditions."

Officials expect the service to meet needs of retail and manufacturing clients that have seasonal surges in orders. The freight is delivered through sister company Con-way Freight's network of nearly 300 North American facilities.

Joplin-based Con-way Truckload, formerly Contract Freighters Inc., employs 3,000 drivers with a fleet of more than 2,600 tractors and 8,600 trailers operating in the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

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