Yellow Freight closure thread

one of the major reasons causing inflation, which causes the economy to go haywire

God bless every American and their families! God bless the U.S.A.!

The absolute sheer driving force of our national economy - without truck drivers, our entire national economy would come to an absolute standstill - if not outright be dead.

Over the mountains, through the woods, into the valleys, coast to coast, from sea to shining sea - truck drivers can and do go anywhere and everywhere, every day, every night, all year round.

 

This is almost exactly what the people abandoning California say. Then they try changing their new location to be just like what they left. You get what you do or don’t(abstain) vote for.

 

Not me. When I got to Tennessee the first thing I did was get my Commiefornia license plates off my car and my CDL changed to Tennessee too. If my non accent didnt give me away I would be a lifelong Tennessean.

 

I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm not involved in any union. I'm pretty neutral about them. If there was a job that I wanted, I'd join if it was required.
But I have to ask this question of those that are union members.
If I go out every day, do my job better than anyone else, be a total company man and tow the company line better than anyone else, and the owners take notice, why would I give up what I'd worked for? Or, in other words, why would I let some guy or gal in a fancy suit negotiate on My behalf? But the unions seem to want the same deal for everyone. The lazy guy gets the same as the guy busting his butt. So why should I be lumped in with the lazy guy? And paid the same? Seems I could do better negotiating on my own behalf.

Truth is, I don't care about my coworkers getting a square deal. As far as I'm concerned, that's their problem. And what the owner of a company makes has no bearing on what I'm doing. As long as I'm happy, that's all I care about.

 

What's worse is working in a union shop (Roadway) part time, non union, and having the union Boys come by and tell me to slow down.
I told them "I got 2 speeds, off and on. Right now, I'm on."
They kinda left me alone after that.

 

I don’t see how they had much money if any money left considering that they had to pay their secure clients first. Remember that they had to pay back Uncle Sam first because the Justice Department was breathing down their neck about squandering that money on the trucks that they shouldn’t have bought with the money, thus violating the terms of the loan.

 

Lot of to unpack there. And I will try to respond to as much of that as possible.

Union dues for me were $50/month when I started and roughly $78/month when I left. So that is initially less than 2.5 times and then eventually more than 2.5 times of what I made. But that is just a few dollar difference and I won't doubt or argue your numbers since it is close enough. This DOES however explain why the union pushed so hard to increase our wages IF their dues were based on that formula. I was more than happy with my pay and would have gladly stayed at the rate I made.

Our union overall was weak. Maybe 30% strong support, with the rest of us just working at Holland for the pay, benefits, or a combination of both (myself included). Our representation really did not give a crap either. We had a barn of 60 people (YRC down the road had 9) so we were small fish compared to the hundreds that UPS had. We were lucky if our BA made it down to us twice a year. Again, I did not care about the politics so I did not care if I ever saw him or not. We did not have monthly meetings, they rotated out quarterly between different cities and I was not inclined to drive two hours so I can listen to UPS complain about their problems. Those guys dwarfed us probably 10-1 at least. I made two appearances when they held meetings in our local (and again, it was all about UPS) but I did get a free t-shirt and breakfast out of it. That kinda goes in the "win" column despite our own drivers not getting a word in. The voting thing just did not matter since our entire barn could vote against things or not at all and we would be disproportionally outvoted by ....you guessed it: United Package Smashers.

The whole health care being tied to the NMFA I am not sure about, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and just take your word for it that you are spitting facts. It would be a reasonable response to strike if the company was blatantly violating the contract this obscenely and not giving us 1/3 of our compensation package. But that is neither here nor there since the terms were "cake or death" at that point.

Why would I "want" a union job if I did not support the Union? I actually almost turned the job down because it was union. But ultimately I ended up telling myself I would accept it and choose to be neither pro or anti union while I was employed there. I would stay a-political when I was clocked in, and I would also not bad-mouth the Union when I was clocked out. But why did I accept the position if I was that conflicted?

The pay and benefits. That is all and everything! This is literally all and everything for anyone reading this. You apply at a job, and they outline your pay and benefits. You then weigh the pros vs cons and decide whether or not this position will advance you or set you back with your quality of life. In my case I was salaried at $840 a week with no benefits and my prospective employer Holland was willing to nearly double what I was making, how could I say no? I was not in it cause it was a union job. I was in it cause I was not even making enough to give my kid a bicycle and Holland was the only one hiring at the time. You can accuse me of riding on the coattails of the Union but you can not fault me for doing so. Most of the people I worked with were just there for the pay and benefits, not because they were somehow emotionally invested in the success of the union.

On a last note, our BA being in DC to do his job, I will give you that much. But him and the rest of the Muppets at leadership ghosting us afterwards from that point on was not cool. Maybe they realized that we were just dead weight to them at this point. That is how they treated us at least.

 

Even Yellow was smart enough to pay back the government. The last thing they want is that level of scrutiny from the US Treasury when you are ripping off 22,000 of your own workers as you file for bankruptcy. You absolutely do not lie, cheat, or steal from the US government. They hate competition.

 

I’ve been saying that all d a m n day. They knew they weren’t supposed to be buying stuff with that money.
What’s even more ridiculous is after Yellow bit the dust some of those same executives were hired to run another company ,with predictable results!
A blind man could see that this was a bad idea!

 

None of the management were hired in for Jack Cooper car hauling if that's what you are referencing, they were hired to spin up an LTL operation for the ownership behind Jack Cooper and that is what they have done with the purchase of Standard Forwarding.