AKRON, Ohio - June 23, 2000 - Roadway Express, Inc.(NASDAQ: ROAD) is re-aligning its freight network, effective July 17, to further reduce transit times and improve its customer service throughout North America. Expanding upon successful regional service products, the motor carrier has adjusted schedules and added more sleeper operations to improve the overall speed and reliability of its core less-than-truckload (LTL)service.
This improved service will connect key metro areas around the country via sleeper teams and other innovative logistics processes. Over 500 new sleeper team schedules will be added to lanes across the country.
"We continually review our operations and look for opportunities for improvement," said John Bronneck, vice president of operations for Roadway. "Adding more sleeper transportation allows us to keep freight moving, reducing cycle times for our customers. Our network is so fine-tuned that we really don't talk in terms of days anymore, we are looking more at how we can take hours out of our delivery schedule."
Some of the lanes that Roadway expects to see dramatic improvements in transit times are: the Chicago, IL metro to New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, MD, Philadelphia, PA and Boston, MA metro areas; the New York/New Jersey metro areas to Florida; Dallas, TX to the Northeast region; and the Cleveland/Akron, OH/Buffalo, NY metro areas to the West Coast.
Overall, revamping of the carrier's operations will improve transit on over 1000 city-to-city lane combinations, and Roadway expects to see transit times reduced significantly on most of these lanes. "We feel this expanded regional coverage is an excellent complement to our industry-leading suite of time-based services," continued Bronneck. "We operate with the most efficient parallel freight and information networks and the most highly trained workforce in the industry. This allows us to easily compete on these critical regional lanes."
