Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 16, 1994 TAG: 9410180025
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The Orvis Co. Inc., the Manchester, Vt.-based mail order company whose distribution center is in Roanoke's Centre for Industry and Technology, has signed a multiyear agreement with FedEx Logistics Services for the delivery of all orders over $75 beginning with those generated by Orvis' fall catalog. FedEx is a division of the Federal Express Corp.
Orvis' fall book features a new "Order Today and Wear It Tomorrow" program, which allows customers who place orders before 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time to receive their merchandise the next business day.
To make good on that guarantee, Orvis needed Memphis-based FedEx to begin flying one of its jets daily to Roanoke. FedEx has been serving the Roanoke area for years by trucking merchandise to and from the Greensboro, N.C., airport. It began the Roanoke flights on Oct. 3.
It was the Roanoke airport's second all-cargo carrier to begin daily service to Roanoke in the past two months.
Burlington Air Express of Irvine, Calif., which also had been trucking its cargo to and from Greensboro, landed planes at the Roanoke airport in mid-August.
Besides the passenger airlines, which also haul freight, Roanoke's airport now has six major all-cargo carriers flying in and out daily: Airborne Express, DHL Airways, Emery Worldwide, United Parcel Service, FedEx and Burlington.
Air-freight shipments at the airport are on a pace to set a record this year, according to the Roanoke Regional Airport Commission. Air freight loaded and unloaded at the airport from January through August weighed in at 19.6 million pounds, a 27.9 percent increase over the same period a year earlier. In August alone, total air freight, which is the portion of air cargo exclusive of mail, arriving and leaving the airport soared 57.25 percent ahead of the weight handled during the same month last year.
Air freight shipments moving through the Roanoke airport are growing at a faster rate than they are nationwide. Airport officials say they expect shipments this year to be at least 8 million pounds ahead of last year, when 30.53 million pounds moved through the airport.
Nationally, domestic and international shipments of air freight this January through August are running 9.2 percent ahead of last year based on revenue-ton miles.
Nationwide, air freight has been growing around 6 percent to 8 percent a year. Tim Neale, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, said two developments have been helping fuel the growth. They are the expansion of global trade and manufacturing and the advent of "just-in-time" manufacturing systems. The latter, replacing the concept of companies maintaining large plant inventories, rely on the delivery of parts and material just when they are needed.
New products and incentives offered by the air-freight carriers, such as guaranteed two-day service also are promoting the growth of air freight, according to the Washington, D.C.-based ATA.
Much of the overall industry growth is occurring in expedited next-day products, such as UPS' new service with deliveries promised before 8 a.m., said Richard Shreve, the director of cargo services for the ATA.
The U.S. Postal Service continues to be the air-freight industry's biggest customer.
The next-day service offered through air freight gives mail order companies a better way to compete with shopping malls, said Rodney Brown, Orvis' warehouse manager. "One of the resistances consumers have to ordering through catalogs has been the industry's inability to meet the consumer's desire for instant gratification," he said.
Catalog merchants have used air-freight delivery to counter that problem, although customers generally using it, such as Orvis' next-day service, pay an extra charge. Under Orvis' new plan, customers placing orders over $75 can get free two-day delivery through FedEx.
Brown said 75 percent of Orvis' shipments to customers now go by air through FedEx. Before its contract with the air-freight carrier, 80 percent of Orvis shipments moved through the U.S. Postal Service, he said.
Armand Schneider, a spokesman for Federal Express in Memphis, said the company was able to route a flight directly to Roanoke because of the growth of the company's freight business here, about 10 percent a year. FedEx has been delivering packages in Roanoke for about 10 years.
Mickey White, transportation manager for Elizabeth Arden Co. in Roanoke, says the cosmetics maker often uses air freight but tries to avoid it. That's because the cosmetics and perfumes the company manufactures and packages in Roanoke are considered hazardous materials by federal regulators. Shipping them by air requires more precautions and a lot more paperwork than non-flammable air-cargo shipments would require.
However, having more air-freight carriers at the airport is good for him and other Roanoke shippers, White said, because it gives workers two or three hours longer to prepare freight for shipment than when the cargo was trucked to a North Carolina airport. Also, in-bound freight from the company's vendors arrives at the plant earlier in the morning, he said.
The Roanoke airport has been making plans to improve its facilities for handling air freight at the airport. Air-freight carriers are using the airport's former passenger terminal as a freight-handling facility.
Engineering work on the first two phases of new air cargo facilities at the airport will be completed during the winter, according to Mark Courtney, the airport's planning and market development director. The air-cargo terminal will be located on a 7-acre site in the northeast corner of the airport.
Those initial phases, expected to be completed sometime in 1996, will include several thousand square feet of ramp space for parking cargo aircraft and utility and other improvements costing about $6 million. Federal grants will pay 90 percent of the work with the state and local governments sharing the remainder.
Additional commercial space should be freed at the airport in a few years when construction of a new control tower will permit the demolition of the old passenger terminal to which the current control tower is attached. Congress recently approved an appropriation of $350,000 for an engineering and site-study for a new tower, estimated to cost $4 million.
Good air-freight service is essential to efforts to attract new industry into the Roanoke region, said Anil Panicker, a transportation planner with the 5th District Planning Commission. "There is room for improvement," he said.
One issue that needs attention, he said, is improved access to the airport for trucks. The turns and signals on Peters Creek and Thirlane roads make access not as smooth as it could be, he said.
Courtney said when the airport revises its master plan over the next few months, one of the issues the airport commission will look at, in consultation with the planning district commission, is the roadway needs at the airport.
by CNB