Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

There actually exists an important company within the world of trucking named Descartes.  I say "within the world of trucking" because it is not strictly a trucking company.  It doesn't own trucks or hire drivers. It is, rather, a logistics technology company, offering techie services for fleet management.  Descartes is headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario.  The newly contentious US/Canada border and trade issues have made Descartes important for folks like me, who write about matters financial. It may also have made its "logistics support" more important for many potential customers. So ... mazel tov.  Anyway: Descartes has recently bought up another company doing related work -- Tai Software, of California.  Descartes bought Tai for $100 million cash.  On an utterly related corporate point: there is a stable-materials company headquartered in Doylestown, Pennsylvania "The Horse, Inc." by name.  A company executing a good industry roll-up could acq...

  The company Yellow, a freight-moving trucking concern that has been around for nearly a century, is now in bankruptcy.  Why? As usual, there are a lot of reasons: The intransigence of the Teamsters, a series of bad judgments by the managers, and a private equity firm's desire to fish in troubled waters all enter the picture. But what I want to talk about today is the nature of the business that Yellow is in.  (It has no connection, by the way, with Yellow Cabs. Yellow is simply a distinctive and easily distinguishable color on the move, so it was a natural choice for two distinct sets of company founders.)  Yellow is in the LTL business. This means that it contracts to move freight that constitutes less than a full truckload -- less than enough material to fill up one of those ubiquitous trailers one sees on the road.  Though there are other firms that work for shippers willing to fill several full truckloads at once, the segment of LTL freight is a critical p...