For some of the business it took 4-6 months for them to finally close. It was heart rending experience to watch some of these customers that I have had for several years to struggle and then close. YEah, it is never the best to cut it so close that something like this would close you down, but if you have put everything you can into expanding, have a lot of product in transit, or perishable product in inventory that you cant ship out, this is what I am talking about.
In my business, my son made a small mistake that killed off close to $8000 dollars worth of stock. I had to buy it on credit, now had much less stock for the customer to choose from. To keep enough choice for the customer to draw them in, I had to purchase another 8 grand of fish. THat hurt. Lucky for me I have a substantial income that supports this business. If I was depending on the business for my income, that would have been deadly. And if it would have happened again, even with the additional income, it would have been bad.
Many small business operate on a shoestring and a major setback like our strike, when you depended on us for all your shipping needs, was really rough. And in our area things did not get back to normal for quite some time. That is why many shippers now will NEVER place all their shipping needs in the hands of just one provider. And FDX et al have made the most of it. They require the shippers not only to have an account, but make them use it for at least a substantial portion of their shipments. And several were told that during the last contract that they could only ship a small % over what they had been shipping in the last 3 months.
IN our business environment of today, many if not most are dependant on shipping companies like ours. And while I enjoy making good money as much as any, going on strike to prove a point or to flex muscle is wrong. And when we have as much in our system of the GNP as we do, it hurts the national economy and in many cases can be deadly for the local economy.
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