Word: belled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Motor Carrier Act of 1980 defined the industry's road to deregulation. Since then, the number of truckload haulers such as Bell has multiplied about threefold, to nearly 60,000. The act also unleashed such new rivals as United Parcel Service to take away customers from the complacent. "If you look at the list of the 100 biggest companies in the business in 1979 before deregulation, today there are only nine or 10 left," says Thomas J. Donohue, president and CEO of the American Trucking Association...
...Bell has been around too long to be called an upstart--and his isn't one of the 100 biggest firms--but he still goes flat-out to stay ahead of fierce competition. Says Bell: "Success is never guaranteed in our industry." Last year was the first in a decade that Texas American lost money; this year is profitable so far. It is one measure of how deregulation has helped both the consumer and the supplier that Bell charges 2[cents] or so less a mile for hauling than when he entered the business in the '80s. "Deregulation has taken...
Technology is helping. Bell says his trucks need an overhaul only every 1 million miles instead of 300,000. They need an oil change every 30,000 miles instead of 10,000. In 1979 many trucks got 4 m.p.g.; now they average 7. Computers allow more timely, efficient service...
Competition is spreading off the interstates and onto state roads, where a federal law further deregulated trucking in 1995. Texas truckers were among the most protected. But now, for example, an operator from Oklahoma can poach on Texas locals' business. Bell says he has not tried to haul within his state "because we don't have a need." In other words, he's got all the competition he can handle on the interstate right...
...Bryan, a former Golden Gloves boxer as well as a banker, entrepreneur and corporate-turnaround artist, took charge of ICG, then known as IntelCom Group, in 1995. A good time to jump in, given the impending passage of the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996, which ordered the Baby Bell phone companies to end their monopolies of local service. Now Bryan is trying to outsprint other new companies by offering phone service via electrical-utility lines...