FedEx Freight Debuts On The Web
American Freightways and Viking Freight are vanishing. Parent company, FedEx, is easing the old names from public consciousness and imprinting a new name, FedEx Freight, which will appear on trucks, advertisements, printed materials and — importantly — on the Internet.
Rita Moore, managing director of eCommerce for FedEx Freight was responsible for merging the e-commerce capabilities of American and Viking into a single, customer-friendly FedEx Freight entity. The new site launched on June 10.
"Our goal was to be a mirror image of our parent company's web site," said Moore
Indeed, the new site at www.fedexfreight.fedex.com sports the same look and feel as the main FedEx site, www.fedex.com, and each site links to other other. But looks aren't everything.
Moore and some 14 programmers spent the better part of six months merging the best elements of the two freight sites.
"It is more robust than what each company individually had," said Moore.
For example, shipment tracking drew the most users to each of the American and Viking sites, but Viking's site offered more search options.
"You could track by shipper's number, a reference number that our customer would have," Moore explained.
That functionality is now available across the FedEx freight landscape where the former American division is called FedEx Freight East; the former Viking operation is referred to as FedEx Freight West.
According to FedEx Freight spokeswoman Kathy Keller, the combined companies will continue to concentrate on regional LTL and distribution markets.
Meanwhile, e-commerce will draw the FedEx Freight even closer to its FedEx parent.
According to Moore, FedEx is working to provide a single source of shipment company across its divisions. Customers will be able to visit one site and locate shipments being handled by any of FedEx's divisions, from FedEx Freight to FedEx Ground to FedEx Express.
"That is in the works," said Moore. "I do know it's on the horizon and it won't be too long."
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