Foundation and early history Consolidated Freightways was founded on April 1, 1929 by
Leland James in
Portland, Oregon. Originally a single truck LTL operation, in the early days James combined four local short-haul carriers in the Portland area into a single carrier. At the beginning, the company primarily focused on the Portland area before expanding into the region. James was an innovator focused on improving the product capacity of his truck and trailer combinations. Length laws were stringent in the 1930s, so if a company were to survive they had to be innovative. James purchased his custom power units from Freightways Manufacturing Company and helped to design the first
Cab Over Engine (COE) power units used in the US. These COE power units were lightweight and short, allowing for an additional freight box mounted on the frame of the truck behind the cab for single trailer units. Shorter COE units without the frame-mounted freight box could haul longer than normal short trailers hitched as doubles. Both of these configurations allowed each combination to haul more freight than standard configurations. These innovations in truck and trailer design and configuration led to CF founding
Freightways Manufacturing in 1939. It was later re-branded as
Freightliner Manufacturing. Over the subsequent years, CF acquired additional manufacturing companies including railroad equipment manufacturer Transicold Corporation and glass fiber product manufacturer Technic-Glas Corporation. By 1959, the company was the largest common carrier in the US with revenues of and almost 11,000 employees. Its operations covered 34 states plus Canada and included 13,800 pieces of equipment. were nonunion, creating tense relations with CF's Teamsters. CEX was the former Penn-Yan Express, and was union, but Conway dissolved the company and later allowed CCX to assume its routes, thereby eliminating all union affiliation with the company.
CF Airfreight and Emery Worldwide In 1970, the
Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), a now-defunct Federal agency that, at the time, tightly regulated the almost all US commercial aviation, allowed CF subsidiary
CF Airfreight to engage in air
freight forwarding. The CAB had authority over air freight forwarders as so-called
indirect air carriers. The US domestic air cargo market was deregulated at the end of 1977 by the
Air Cargo Deregulation Act. The next year, CF Airfreight had grown to become the 10th largest US air freight forwarder. By early 1989, CF Airfreight had 15 large commercial aircraft flown by six contractors. On April 3, 1989, CF purchased Emery Air Freight Corp.
dba Emery Worldwide and its subsidiary
Purolator Courier Corporation. CF merged its pre-existing air freight operation, CF Airfreight, into Emery. This division was union. Due to poor fleet maintenance, Emery Worldwide Airlines ceased operations in December, 2001. The next year Emery Worldwide’s freight forwarding operations were rebranded as Menlo Worldwide Forwarding, and Emery Global Logistics was absorbed into Menlo Logistics. Menlo Worldwide Forwarding was sold to
UPS in 2004. On April 18, 2006, CNF Transportation re-branded itself under a new name,
Con-Way, and remained in operation until October 30, 2015, when they were acquired by Greenwich, Connecticut-based
XPO, Inc. == Subsidiaries ==