Con-Way Transportation, Ann Arbor, Mich., announced a new intermodal option to customers.

The company called it a "slower and lower" service option. The "slower" portion of the new option comes from using intermodal linehaul service to move transcontinental shipments. The "lower" portion of the option provides an automatic 20 percent reduction from prices already negotiated with customers. The service starts Monday, Sept. 9 and is called Con-Way Deferred.
The new service will be available only in transcontinental markets. Qualifying shipments must move between the states of Washington, Oregon and California, on the one hand, and a set of thirty-seven eastern states, two Canadian provinces and the District of Columbia on the other.
Gerald L. Detter, president and chief executive officer of Con-Way, explained the strategy behind the new service. "We invested in building the most extensive infrastructure of LTL freight handling facilities in North America during the last decade. This included extra capacity for future growth. We established complete transcontinental service between all the LTL Con-Way units in 1996. We cut two to four days off normal LTL transcontinental transit times, and that has attracted a major portion of the time-sensitive market. Market research shows us, however, that there's another large market that ships their transcontinental LTL freight based on cost. We see our entry into this price-sensitive market as an opportunity for significant growth."
Con-Way Deferred is the second new service introduced by the company this year under the "Value Zone" name. The first Value Zone service was introduced in January when Con-Way Full Load was opened. That service is a full truckload brokerage operation. The Value Zone products are designed to provide Con-Way customers with lower cost service options.