Central Freight Lines Selects Sterling Commerce Multi-Enterprise Collaboration Solutions for Business Process Automation.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- End-to-End Business Automation and Real-time Information Exchange Improves Customer Service and Drives Greater Efficiency

Central Freight Lines, Inc., a leader in expedited less-than-truckload carrier services, today announced it has selected Sterling Commerce Multi-Enterprise Collaboration solutions for its business integration, automation and processing needs. With Sterling Commerce's industry-leading solutions in place, Central Freight can rely on one vendor for end-to-end business automation and enhanced visibility into real-time information exchange, delivering superior customer service to several thousand customers.

With nearly 30 years of experience and 29,000 customers, Sterling Commerce is a pioneer in offering end-to-end business integration from inside the enterprise to the community at-large. Central Freight selected Sterling Commerce Gentran Integration Suite as a single platform to share information such as shipment status and remittance advice, enabling the company to have greater visibility and control of day-to-day operations, while saving costs. Gentran Integration Suite, a modular solution built on the Multi-Enterprise Services Architecture, enables the intelligent and timely use of business information by uniting any-to-any integration-brokerage services, multi-gigabyte file support, and strong business process management capabilities including detailed analytics and content-based routing for decision-making support.

"Managing our information to and from thousands of customers is not an easy task since each has a different system, communication requirement, standard and non-standard data, and specific business processes that must be supported," said Bob Black, director of information systems, Central Freight. "And, due to the time-sensitive nature of communications in our business, tens of thousands of messages, custom files and records need to flow throughout our supply chain in near-real time on a daily basis."

To accomplish this, Central Freight Lines developed an event-driven system that allows information to flow through the company and to customers automatically based on pre-established business rules. "We found the customer requirements, our internal systems and the Sterling Commerce Gentran Integration Suite form a great marriage that enables us to streamline the flow of critical shipment status information," Black said. Central Freight Lines uses Gentran Integration Suite to transform and route bills of lading, truckload tenders, and remittance advice received from customers to various systems and employees for immediate action.

"Customers today demand quick turn-around," added Black. "With Sterling Commerce Gentran Integration Suite, the speed with which we will be able to deliver this information is a major benefit we can extend to our customers." Black noted that streamlining critical business processes increases Central Freight Line's efficiency, eliminates errors from manual processing, and enhances cash application.

"Sterling Commerce has a proven track record of success in our industry, and we have tremendous confidence in the company and its solutions," Black said. "As we update our business processing and information exchange capabilities, we want one provider, one support team and one solution that could meet our end-to-end business automation needs, and we found that with Sterling Commerce."

"The multi-enterprise business integration and processing capabilities we offer are second to none," said Nolan Rosen, chief marketing officer, Sterling Commerce. "We not only enable our customers to accept and convert data from external sources, but also allow them to analyze and act on that data, automate responses, and filter out errors, which provides enormous business benefits."

About the Sterling Commerce Multi-Enterprise Services Architecture (MESA)

MESA is a standards-based, multi-enterprise service-oriented architecture that supports established business processes for unmatched visibility and control over business communities. This architecture is delivered in pre-packaged, on-demand or custom services suites.

About Central Freight Lines, Inc.

Central Freight Lines, Inc. is a non-union less-than-truckload carrier specializing in regional overnight and second day markets. One of the 10 largest regional LTL carriers in the nation, Central provides regional, interregional, and expedited services, as well as value-added supply chain management, throughout the Midwest, Southwest, West Coast and Pacific Northwest. Utilizing marketing alliances, Central provides service solutions to the Great Lakes, Northeast, Southeast, Mexico and Canada.

About Sterling Commerce

Sterling Commerce, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC), is one of the world's largest providers of Multi-Enterprise Collaboration solutions. For three decades, thousands of companies, including the majority of the Fortune 500, have depended on Sterling Commerce expertise to extend processes beyond the edge of the enterprise to enable visible business with suppliers, customers, partners and employees. With more than 29,000 customers worldwide, Sterling Commerce builds collaborative, multi-enterprise communities for customers in the retail, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, financial services, healthcare and telecommunications industries. For detailed, up-to-date information on Sterling Commerce and our solutions, visit www.sterlingcommerce.com.

SBC Communications Inc. is a Fortune 50 company whose subsidiaries, operating under the SBC brand, provide a full range of voice, data, networking, e-business, directory publishing and advertising, and related services to businesses, consumers and other telecommunications providers. SBC holds a 60 percent ownership interest in Cingular Wireless, which serves 25 million wireless customers. SBC companies provide high-speed DSL Internet access lines to more American consumers than any other provider and are among the nation's leading providers of Internet services. SBC companies also now offer satellite TV service. Additional information about SBC and SBC products and services is available at (www.sbc.com).