What A Fleet Or Driver Should Expect Running FEMA Loads

Jul 15, 2019 at 08:27 AM CST - 1
This article was originally published on freightwaves.com in 2017 in reaction to Hurricane Harvey. FreightWaves continues to receive questions regarding relief loads, so we are republishing it to help answer some of those questions. I started Xpress Direct in 2002 and ran the operation until 2005. I have not worked for a trucking company in over a decade, as I have chosen a new path as CEO and Founder of FreightWaves, but I wanted to share my story. -Craig Fuller, CEO of FreightWaves On Friday, I posted an article on FreightWaves about my personal experience running the on-demand emergency unit of US Xpress. Over the course of four-years of major hurricane activity, my division handled in excess of 20,000 shipments and billed over $100M in revenue in disaster relief loads alone (we had a much larger on-demand business- but disaster relief was significant for us). We happened to be involved in one of the first projects that ever used commercial contractors for logistics and experienced first-hand how challenging FEMA logistics can be. Over the years, we became pretty good at understanding how to manage these projects and built systems and trained our staff to be prepared for it. We had a team that coordinated activity in Chattanooga in our hurricane "war-room" and would fly a group of on-site folks out to the relief sites to manage activity. While the work was challenging, we knew that we were doing something important. Over the years, we learned a few important things. I have tried to make note of these items below.

Jul 15, 2019 at 08:27 AM CST

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This article was originally published on freightwaves.com in 2017 in reaction to Hurricane Harvey. FreightWaves continues to receive questions regarding relief loads, so we are republishing it to help answer some of those questions. I started Xpress Direct in 2002 and ran the operation until 2005. I have not worked for a trucking company in over a decade, as I have chosen a new path as CEO and Founder of FreightWaves, but I wanted to share my story. -Craig Fuller, CEO of FreightWaves On Friday, I posted an article on FreightWaves about my personal experience running the on-demand emergency unit of US Xpress. Over the course of four-years of major hurricane activity, my division handled in excess of 20,000 shipments and billed over $100M in revenue in disaster relief loads alone (we had a much larger on-demand business- but disaster relief was significant for us). We happened to be involved in one of the first projects that ever used commercial contractors for logistics and experienced first-hand how challenging FEMA logistics can be. Over the years, we became pretty good at understanding how to manage these projects and built systems and trained our staff to be prepared for it. We had a team that coordinated activity in Chattanooga in our hurricane "war-room" and would fly a group of on-site folks out to the relief sites to manage activity. While the work was challenging, we knew that we were doing something important. Over the years, we learned a few important things. I have tried to make note of these items below.