Inherited Trucking company transition!!

I drove for a family owned private company for almost 25 years. There were many great things about it because back in those days the culture was a big family and it was always said by the owner and his vp’s that “we all work together and get rich.” It wasn’t a feeling of you work for me and i get rich. The owner even if he hadn’t seen you in years always knew you and or wife’s name and always greeted you with “ how long have we been working together?” Upper tier class at it’s finest. He passed away and all that stopped. The step son was a ghost. Don’t do that.

 

Outside broker? Do you mean a transportation broker? So they are brokering loads to "your" company and running it? Seems pretty ripe for double dipping on the freight.

 

You state you don’t know what kind of profit it makes? For me, that is a huge RED FLAG!! I realize is has only been a short amount of time since everything on your Father-in-Law side has been completed, but this company/brokerage should have scheduled a meeting with your husband(and you) the day after they were notified of that completion. This Company/Brokerage not longer works for the Court, no longer works for the Probate process, no longer is a ‘blind trust caretaker’, they work for your Husband and You.
You need to know, from this point forward what the hard cold numbers are.
What % of the gross receipts is this company keeping for itself? What % of the receipts is to be allocated to You and your Husband? This is now your Company, your side of this equation is entitled to a % of the earnings of this company. I’m sure your late Father-in-Law would have insisted on it.

 

This is important for the OP to read. Stop focusing on the opening line and read the rest. All the other suggestions are good but many don't employ drivers or I don't think they do.

Congrats, you have a nightmare in the works.

here is what you really need to do;

first you need to get your crap together and figure out how to manage it or find someone who YOU CAN TRUST to run it for you and you have to still be involved. YOU CAN NOT MANAGE IT FROM A DISTANCE, IT IS A DAILY THING.

Learn your drivers, go to them, arrange for a good dinner and meeting, don’t be cheap.

You need to spend day or two, AT THE MINIMUM, meeting, learning who they are, what their concerns are, and letting them know you actually will not be an arm chair owner.

don’t take sides when it comes to issues, don’t make promises and don’t act like they are not important because this is how they feed their families.

There is a hell of a lot of red flags, but I didn't say much about them. I assume the OP has a lawyer other than the probate lawye, who will look at EVERYTHING from contracts to employment records to make sure these two don't lose their **** with a legal problem. I also assumed they have a good accountant outside of the probate case that can look at the books and make sure they are straight or are seeing money funneled off illegally.