He made choices. They may have been the correct ones for him, but his business still failed. The market changed and his business didn’t adapt and went under. That’s the definition of a failed business.
You basing your comments are conditions found in the Boston Metro area where you operate. But, it's not that way everywhere.
The terminal I was at is in a depressed rural area but then again X is a nationwide carrier. Somebody has to try to cover it
Because of it's limited size no contractor has more than 5 routes. Due to such a small scale it means that you have to drive one yourself while your other routes are 50 miles or more away from you making it hard to support them.
Now, due the poor roads you expend far more miles on unpaved surfaces than on paved ones tearing the living crap out of the trucks along with the high mileages repairs are constant and costly and trucks don't last long. But then again somebody whether it be me or someone else somebody has to go out in those god forsaken places .....Or they would be no Fedex Ground network and no network means no IWBF.
Now combine these factors with the sparse population whereby about the best you'll do is 8-9 SPH the result is that you'll make if you're lucky about 60 bucks a week of a route. And that's based on your good fortune to find people willing to bust arse out there for about what you pay. Half the wages and zero benefits of a UPS driver. Finding them isn't easy and they don't stay long and somebody coming in to replace them is anything but certain.
Not an attractive proposition given the fact that x controls you and every aspect of your everyday operation.
It explains why none of us who were there at the beginning wanted anything to do with multi route contracting . It just simply was not a good place to put more money at risk and I was the position where I didn't have to do it.
Does turning down a business proposal because it was a highly unfavorable one make it a failed business?
if you want to see a what a "failed business" looks like. Go find the "managers" who thought they knew more about the business that we Day1's did who became insolvent and excontractors in a short period of time. They lost their butts. Some lost their home, some lost their marriages and one ended up in jail.