APX Logistics

The sudden shutdown in March of freight consolidator APX Logistics brings July 1997 to mind. That was when UPS workers went on strike. The big difference, of course, was that UPS settled its strike within two weeks that year, and its trucks quickly returned to the road. APX — formerly RR Donnelley Logistics and CTC Distribution Direct, once used by many catalogers as a low-cost UPS alternative — is gone, leaving FedEx's SmartPost as the only comparable alternative. APX's demise brings to mind the lessons learned from the UPS strike: the need to spread out your ground shipments among several carriers. But since