Empire Express

Newswire

News You Can Use for the Entire Empire Family 3rd Quarter, 2019

Regen and DPF Systems

Recently we have noticed a trend of trucks being towed to the shop, where the root cause was the same - the regeneration (regen) button was turned off / in stop position. Although most are aware of how the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) System works, it is evident that we need to re-educate some. Here are some pointers for operating your truck’s DPF System to avoid those unnecessary tows. To begin, your truck is equipped with a three-position regen switch mounted on the dash. The following is an overview of this switch:

START: Depressing the button in the START direction for at least 4—8 seconds will initiate a parked regen.

CENTER: This is the normal position. When driving, the regen switch must be in the CENTER position. STOP: Pushing the button to the STOP position will prevent the DPF system from operating.

The following are some helpful pointers to stay on the road and avoid those unnecessary trips to the local Peterbilt shop: 1. If doing a Parked Regen, make sure you are in a safe location (outside), where no one is in the immediate vicinity to the tailpipe, and no flammable materials within 5 feet of the vehicle, prior to hitting START. 2. Keep the switch in the CENTER position to allow an automatic regen to occur if conditions allow. 3. Do not push the switch to STOP unless there is a safety or legal concern. Stopping a regen will flag a code and you may not be able to regen again, causing a trip to the local shop. 4. Running the engine with the switch in the STOP position will result in increased soot levels in the DPF and could eventually cause the engine to derate.

2

Experience Needed Experience is defined as “the knowledge or mastery of a subject gained through involvement in or exposure to it”. Think about that. Experience is the culmination of personal participation in a specific subject. Knowing about a subject does not make one an expert. Participating in the subject, over and over again, results in experience.

“Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of

mistakes is what is called experience.” -Denis Waitley Every day, I have the privilege of working with some of the most experienced workers in the industry. Consider the years of experience many of you in our senior (by tenure, not age) driving force have. Those years combined across our fleet equate to literally hundreds of years of experience! Years of time-management “tips” and trip-planning “truths” are just waiting to be shared with interested individuals who will value your experiences. Teaching and training from the wealth of experiences stored up in you is one very real way you can contribute to the livelihood of the next generation! Give your experiences life…Pass them on.

Diana

Diana Craddock

VP of Operations

Don Stroud

VP of Sales

New Freight in the Pipeline

When I was a kid in the late ‘70s, I occasionally got to ride in the truck with a neighbor. He had a nice truck. It was around a 1973 Freightliner cabover, and I would always climb in the sleeper when I got in it. I loved riding in that thing. A few weeks ago, I climbed into one of our new Ultralofts and thought, “Wow…how far we have come since 1979”. I am really excited to see all of the new trucks and equally excited about seeing new business for those trucks to haul. Much has happened in the past several months. All of the indexes show that freight movement across the country has been in a steady decline for several months. While our miles haven’t suffered like many companies, we have still felt the effects and have started a push to generate new customer freight utilizing the sales efforts of our logistics team. For the past couple of months, Johnny Gaines and JD Davis, who both run our logistics department have been hitting the streets along with both Tim and me to generate new business for our assets. We have had a great logistics department for years that has primarily backed up our assets, and that is still the case today. Our goal is to bring on new customer freight that will allow our assets more opportunities to utilize our new trucks that are on order. We are working hard to increase our driver miles in this tough environment, and we feel like new business is the best way to accomplish this goal. Hopefully you will continue to see the fruits of our labor in the coming weeks. Our miles are up the past three weeks compared to the first three weeks of the quarter, so we are seeing improvements. We are very grateful for the patience that our drivers have shown and look forward to a strong peak. Don

3

What a Chaplain's Heart Sees With so many OTR (140+) across the US, Empire Express and I are finding new ways for me to connect with you on a monthly or weekly basis. I will be placing a monthly flier in your trucks folder found in maintenance. So, when you and your truck are back in Memphis for maintenance, please check your folder for the flier. Also, the additional services Corporate Chaplains of America has trained me for include any families located outside of Memphis. We can do a group conference through Facetime, Messenger, Outlook, etc. for any needed Family, Financial, Spiritual, or Personal advice needed. Please give me your feedback -- what do you think? Some have already requested I cover Financial Concerns, being involved in Raising Children as an OTR driver, and other ideas. Additionally and spiritually, I'm also open to providing care sessions, a devotional or daily Scripture reading by using social media too. Email and call me: 877-322-2427 (CHAP), ext. 5026; wcooper@chaplain.org Take Care and God Bless!

Walt

Walt Cooper

Chaplain

ABS Malfunction Lamps I wanted to reiterate some comments made by Danny in a recent Maintenance Message, as this simple pre-trip routine can help both you and Empire eliminate unnecessary maintenance violations.

“Please remember to pre-trip your equipment prior to running. Specifically, we need to hyper focus as a group on exterior truck and trailer lighting. This one condition makes up over half of our maintenance violations which of course affects our CSA score. Many of our violations are for inoperative turn and tail lights. The next culprit is the ABS malfunction indicator lamp. This is the yellow abs lamp on the left hand rear side of the trailer. When you hook to the trailer the lamp should blink to indicate it is operational. If it does not blink or stays illuminated once you hook to the trailer it needs service. We can all but eliminate these violations by inspecting our equipment. I have long believed that the secret sauce to success is discipline. The ability to remain focused on a task to drive results. This is a great opportunity for each of us to improve our operational efficiency. If we are disciplined and reduce the violations we all win. I understand that lights go out from time to time but we should do our part to make sure that is the exception not the rule. I have heightened our awareness in the shop safety lane to check these and will be looking into LED lighting solutions to help minimize these violations.”

Todd

Todd Gatlin

VP of Driver Performance

4

Tim Gatlin

President & CEO

New Business, New Lanes, New Trucks

As everyone knows our industry has been in what many analysts are calling a “transportation recession” for much of this year and it has intensified the last few months. According to the CASS Freight Index Report, shipments were down Nationwide 5.3% in June and 6% in May vs. the same months in 2018. The Index also shows that for seven consecutive months, freight volumes have trailed volumes in the same month a year earlier. It has been over 10 years since our industry has experienced such a sharp and sustained slowdown. In fact, I have been at Empire for over 30 years and I have only seen this type of industry slowdown 2 times; those years were 2001 and 2009. Two things I learned from those 2 periods; freight recessions do not last very long, and when they are over, Empire comes out in a stronger position than when the freight recession started. The reasons for this are many but the most obvious reason is that a large number of trucking companies do not survive “transportation recessions.” Trucking companies that are not strong financially, and that don’t have a loyal and long-term customer base just can’t survive during times like this. We are already seeing this as trucking failures have spiked this year to levels not seen in the last 10 years. Fortunately, Empire Express is financially strong and has continued to operate profitably during this downturn. We have a customer base that is very loyal and that has depended on our exceptional safety and on-time performance for many years. We continue to receive great accolades from our safety and time sensitive shippers and as all of you long timers know, many of these shippers are about to hit their peak shipping season. Some of these customers have just awarded us additional business. In the last couple of months, we have also added some additional sales force to go out and pound the pavement. With our history of success within the safety- and time-sensitive niche, our sales team is able to knock on doors that most commodity carriers might not get an opportunity. The awards and accolades from our long-term customer base, only strengthens our resume, and proves that we can walk our talk. We are very excited about recent developments with some new prospective customers and can’t wait to open up new lanes. I know many of you have felt the pain of this “transportation recession” and I want you to know that we are working very hard to combat this pain. I strongly believe the worst is behind us and our business is starting to strengthen now. We are confident our business will only get stronger for the reminder of the year regardless how long the “transportation recession” lasts. This confidence is shown in the tremendous investments we continue to make at Empire. While many companies are retrenching and just trying to stay afloat, we continue to invest heavily in our people, technology and equipment. In fact, we are purchasing more new trucks this year than any year in our history. Overall, our drivers will see 2 new trucks for our city operation and 84 OTR Peterbilt 579 Ultraloft’s this year. We have already purchased 35 thus far this year and we have a whopping 51 being delivered between now and the end of November. All of the Ultraloft’s will continue to have premium interiors, refrigerators, APU’s and smart TV’s.

5

By the end of November, we will be operating 102 Peterbilt Ultraloft’s and the rest of our fleet will be 2016, 2018 and 2019 model Freightliner Cascadia’s or Peterbilt 579’s. Our average fleet age will only be 15 months. We will be trading all of the 2016 model trucks next year and our oldest truck in our fleet at that time will be 2018 models. We are very excited about where our fleet is heading, and without question, we believe this tremendous investment in equipment will payoff big time. We will see significant savings in Fuel and Maintenance costs, and more miles as a result of reduced downtime from fewer breakdowns. This can only help us be a stronger company financially and will help us provide our customers the safe, on-time performance they require.

We plan to be very busy for the remainder of this year with both freight and swapping old trucks for new ones. So,

let’s all buckle up, be safe, and enjoy the ride.

Thanks, and God Bless

Tim

Tim Gatlin

President & CEO

6

It’s Audit Season! As some of you are aware, later this year, we will be audited on our company’s RCMS. Midland Engineering will be onsite October 29-31, and they will be testing our system to ensure that we are up to code. As one of the very few Truckload Van Carriers that is proud to be named a Responsible Care Partner, our company’s participation in the program and adherence to the Responsible Care Guiding Principles is a big deal, to say the least. In years past, what we have found that the most successful approach to preparing for these audits includes a training element. In the upcoming week’s each of you, according to your position / job in the company may be required to complete some additional training, but at a minimum, I think everyone needs a general refresher on our RCMS. As a general refresher, Our Environmental, Health, Safety, and Security policy statement is posted throughout the building. There is a copy in Mark’s office, safety department, operations department, and in the lobby of our building. Take a few minutes next time you are in the office to review this document. It was written by Tim and truly reflects describes our company’s commitment to the RCMS Guiding Principles and our stakeholders. You may have read or heard that Empire Express is a TOP Carrier. Being a TOP Carrier means we are committed to Total Compliance with governmental regulations and Responsible Care requirements; committed to achieving Operational Excellence and continuously improving; most significantly, our RCMS is in place to ensure that we are Protecting People and the Environment. At the end of the day, remembering TOP helps you to remember what our RCMS is all about. Just like most companies, we maintain certain documentation that describes how we go about our business. At Empire we call these our TOP Documents (i.e., Driver Policy & Procedure Manual), as they are the processes, procedures, policies and plans that we have in place to remain a TOP Carrier. See how all of this fits together? As part of the TOP Carrier program, we are tasked with observing operations to identify hazards and risks, which are evaluated based on frequency and severity. After completing the Hazard and Risk Assessment Process, we prioritize the risks (by number) and for items that achieve above a set score, an operational control must be put in place, along with training and other controls. Remember those TOP Documents we just talked about?? Make no mistake our company’s #1 risk is a Driving Accident. Driving is something that we do all day, and the severity of an accident could be irreversible harm to human life and the world around us. In 2019 I challenge you to remain Totally compliant to laws and regulations and keep your focus on Operational Excellence, so that we can Protect people and the environment. After all, that is what being a TOP Carrier is all about!

JP

John Phillips

Chief Operating Officer

7

2019 Commitments As we enter the third quarter of this year I would like to report out to you where we stand on our 2019 commitments to the drivers at Empire Express. As our most valuable customers I feel it is important to maintain a high standard in both our commitments to you and the results that we provide. Here is a summary of our commitments to you and where we stand on them year to date.

Establish our standard jobs to match OEM recommendations as it relates to services performed, at the proper intervals, and to include any campaigns, recalls, and other needed work

to 100% compliance for all fleet equipment. We have come a long way in this commitment to you. Currently 100% of our equipment has the correct original manufacturer’s recommended service interval assigned and the actual service literature can be pulled by any of our staff with the click of a mouse. We also added an eighty thousand mile preventive maintenance schedule on the after treatment system of all of our units. This was done to combat long term issues arising from letting the particulate filters accumulate too much soot over time. Finally we added standard jobs to our reassignment and safety lane processes to address visual obstructions, permit compliance, and a reconciliation of all transponder types. Getting this all captured and available to all of the shop technicians was the first challenge we had in properly maintaining the equipment over time. Going forward we need everyone’s help in sticking to the service intervals and executing this process every time it is due. In the long run this will keep our equipment healthy, safe and our drivers up and running.

Recruit, hire, and develop a workforce that shares our admiration and care for drivers and offers the

strongest and well-rounded support possible to you. You will undoubtedly notice new faces popping up in the shop. As we strive for continuous improvement we will continue to both develop our teammates and recruit the most knowledgeable and caring people we can find to join our team. Since my first day aboard Empire Express I have noticed a positive change in the way we interact. We are closing the gap from intention to results with accountability. We are extending trust to each other and inspecting that which we inspect.

Align and execute our seniority tractor assignments. Our overall goal is to offer up a new unit

for each driver every 3 years or less. We have all but automated this process. We now have real time information to guide us in the decision making part of new truck assignments and standard reassignments. Because of the collective minds at work maintaining this process we are able to effectively seat the correct driver by seniority in either a new or reassigned unit that best fits the driver and our organizational needs. By using a long term vision and limiting the amount of moves we have to make to execute these assignments we are optimizing the utilization of our equipment while providing the appropriate seating for our drivers. In closing I want us to maintain progress in becoming a learning company. I hope you find our weekly maintenance messages helpful, I try to communicate relevant topics that will help keep you running and informed. We have certainly enjoyed our monthly lunch and learn events with you so please take time if you are at the terminal to stop by to visit. This can also be an open forum to address any challenges you may be having. We will get involved with you and clear the path. I look forward to seeing you soon.

Danny

Danny Walston

VP of Maintenance

8

Safety Update

We are continuing to receive Elog notifications regarding drivers that are running over their hours. These are usually due to you getting stuck in traffic, stuck at the shipper or consignee and you have to locate a safe haven which is out of your control. However, the majority of the time with proper trip planning we should be able to know in advance when our time will be out and when we should plan a stop. The system will let you know an hour in advance of going into violation, so please plan your trips properly and know in advance your planned location to take your break before this occurs.

Also, sending out a message requesting and receiving permission to find a safe haven, does NOT keep you from going into violation. If you get stopped by the DOT they can and most likely will write you a violation and/or citation for running over your hours. So please make sure you are planning your trips properly. When you are notified and aware you will not make a pick up or delivery on time due to running short on hours do not continue running in violation. Find a safe place to park to complete your break and notify dispatch giving them your exact location so they either open up your pick up or delivery time or find a relay if needed.

On a more positive note September 8th thru the 14th is National Truck Driver Appreciation Week. This is when America takes the time to honor all professional truck drivers for your hard work and commitment in tackling one of our economy’s most demanding and important jobs. You all are not only delivering our goods safely, securely and on time but more importantly helping to keep our highways safe. We want to thank all of our professional drivers for your hard work and dedication of reaching our motto of “Delivering Safely on Time”. We will be celebrating Driver Appreciation Week with you at our terminal. We will be providing lunch Monday thru Friday and will have daily raffles for some nice gifts to be given away. Please stop by the yard to participate if you are in the Memphis area during this time so we can show you how much you are appreciated. If you are unable to make it to or thru Memphis to attend, please know you are all very much appreciated. We truly do appreciate everything each and every one of you do for Empire.

Remember The Commitment is Zero. Be Safe, Prevent Accidents, Save Lives and

Follow THE Process of 5 Keys + 3. -Mark and Louise

Mark Hopper

VP of Safety