CNF Transportation's Air Freight and Trucking Companies Teamed Up to Provide 'The Lift' for 'Silver Slugger' Sammy Sosa

Business Wire, Oct 27, 1998

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 27, 1998--Chicago Cubs star Sammy Sosa was recently named a 1998 Silver Slugger for National League outfielders, but few know that, behind the scenes, it was two CNF Transportation Inc. businesses that teamed up to provide "the lift" in his bats.

All season long Emery Worldwide and Con-Way Truckload replenished Sosa's supply of bats whenever he needed to replace ones that were nicked, cracked or broken.

It was the second time Sosa has been named a "Silver Slugger," an award chosen by managers and coaches for the best sluggers in each position. Both times, the Emery-Con-Way tag team pitched in to help.

In fact, Emery and Con-Way deliver these specially engineered Louisville Slugger bats for some 28 major and minor teams in both the National and American leagues. Emery's Louisville Service Center shipped an average of one box (five bats) each week day during the eight-month-long baseball season, totaling roughly 640 bats.

Whenever new orders come in, Emery personnel in Louisville dispatch a pickup & delivery truck (P&D) to the manufacturer of the famous Louisville Sluggers, Hillerich and Bradsby. The bats are taken to Emery's 25-person Louisville service center, where they're repackaged and relabeled to disguise their contents from unscrupulous collection hunters.

From there, Con-Way Truckload takes them the 178 miles directly to Emery's main sortation hub in Dayton, Ohio. The bats are then loaded onto Emery planes, flown overnight to the nearest destination airport, put onto Emery Pickup and Delivery trucks and driven directly to the appropriate stadium.

Extra special orders are shipped via Emery's 'Gold Priority' service to ensure maximum security and priority treatment to and from the cargo planes. For example, in the final weeks of this year's historic season, 'Gold Priority' was used to ship 20 customized bats for next-day delivery to Chicago's Wrigley Field, to ensure that Sosa would be prepared for his quest to break Roger Maris' season record of 61 home runs. He didn't do it that time, but the four different models of bats were at hand on time.

"Most of the Major League teams ship their bats through us," said Rick Clevinger, general manager of Emery's Louisville Service Center. "We've been doing it for years. Some days we'll get one or two shipments and some days up to a dozen or more."

Another baseball luminary who gets his bats from the Emery-Con-Way tag team is Ken Griffey, Jr. And for some reason, the Los Angeles Dodgers seem to break the most bats because they need their bat supply to be replenished the most.

And what about that other contemporary sultan of swat, who also won a Silver Slugger award this year for first basemen, Mark McGwire? Apparently he swings with Rawlings.

CNF Transportation is a $4.8 billion diversified freight transportation company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., and with business activities in more than 200 countries. Principal operating companies are Con-Way Transportation Services, a national network of regional trucking companies; Emery Worldwide, a global air cargo company; and Menlo Logistics, a full-service contract logistics company.

Additional information and news about CNF Transportation Inc. can be obtained by visiting the company's website at http: www.cnf.com. The homepage also contains hyperlinks to CNF's main subsidiary and investor relations' sites.