New "Interim" Chief Operations Officer

Navajo tells its drivers to plan for 10 hour breaks at docks.

As far as new trailers, I think diversification is the way to go. Dry van market is flooded and USA is nowhere big enough to compete in the lowball bidding war with the megacarriers. We lost many of our GP and IP mill customers over the last 1-2 years to Swift and Arnold/US Express. Other carriers are probing new types of freight as well. I've seen Schneiders lately pulling reefers and Swift now has a reefer fleet too.

 

Most of the carriers that pull reefers will at some point advise their drivers to keep food with them in case they get stuck at a shipper/receiver, this has happened to me many times. All aspects of the trucking business is cutthroat not just dry van. The real question is can USA Truck find good profitable customers. Yes, it's possible to get freight but what do you have to do to keep it. It does not matter what is being hauled the basic principal of sound business is a must. Also as has been pointed out to me on facebook a lot of the other carriers are carrying debt. In the case of the LTL's some of it is massive. However said debt is small in relation to the overall balance sheet and is being serviced. Most of this debt came from equipment purchases over time. You can't say the same for USA Truck, their debt is approaching 60% of their balance sheet and is growing. This debt is so large now the interest alone is millions of dollars a year. How all of this will end I do not know. I will be interested to see the next 4 quarterly reports. Because if the borrowing does NOT stop within that time period their debt will start to become a monster consuming everything in sight. When this happens USA Truck will find itself in a very tough situation. Remember the company hocked most all of it's assets securing this new credit line. When this credit line is gone there's nothing left. I keep seeing USA Truck defenders talking about changes. The problem is nobody is paying close attention to this debt or the huge hemorrhaging of money taking place. If my memory is correct USA Truck lost almost 6 million as reported in their last quarterly. These loses have been going on now for a long time and are unsustainable. I'm not privy to the actual fine print in this new credit line, but I would imagine buried in it is wording giving the bank the right to cut them off at some point if a preset condition comes to be.

I'm of the opinion the wounds inflicted on the company by the board and that idiot Cliff Beckham are fatal now. I think the US economy is about to take a huge dump and I don't see a turnaround happening because of it. I also feel that more then USA Truck is in trouble too. I think my old carrier WSE and its parent Comcar is in huge trouble now as well. If i'm right about the economy I see a lot of carriers going under not just USA Truck.

 

I have reason to believe that securing a loan with the companies assets is more common practice. Siriusxm took out a credit line and secured it with the companies assets. Siriusxm actually has a strong balance sheet and almost a billion dollars in cash. Because of this I'm thinking asset collateral may be standard practice.

 

All Good and fine Sarge Yes new accounts but look at all the accounts the have lost because of bad drivers and bad dispatchers! I spent 2 years with the company i am no longer there because of the low miles and watching all the new drivers come in and getting 3000 to 3200 aweek well i sat alot! The aother reason with lost accounts has to do with USA CSA scores I can tell you it sucks! My CSA score is 0 in over 2 years of driving I have no points what so ever! Thats because I go by the book I am not a cowboy like most of these new students are when they get out of school and off the trainers trucks! Yes I was a trainer for USA but why train when you tell the training dept that they need to get rid of a student and they get them off your truck and put them on another truck and pass them go figure! I really hope this guy can bring usa truck back around but they need to do something with cliff he is a cancer in usa and needs to be cut out fired and hire someone who will turn usa truck back to what it was

 

USA wasn't good during the 2 years you were with them. Trucking companies have the training dept simply because it satisfies the insurance company. If the insurance company didn't require it heck they would just hire a driver right after they go their CDL. After a student has gotten on a trainer truck USA owes it to themselves to give the student a chance to prove themselves regardless of what the trainer says. Its nothing personal on the trainer. There are good trainers and bad ones. Most all trainers will say they are good trainers even if they in reality have no business training.

 

To Sarge: Whatever new customers or avenues they might be expanding into it can't be looked at as USA truck "expanding" as a company. They are simply trying to find ways to make new revenues to fill that which has been lost. More of a desperate move than anything else.

 

When USA truck goes out of business, IF it goes out of business, I hope you are all there to piss on their ashes. Because you all seem to already have your tally whackers out pointing in that direction.

I know from my experience and from talking to other people, if you are willing to run and have half a brain, you can run well north of 25k miles a week. I have been going to more and more new customers lately. I have even took runs that were USX overflow. Compared to what I was doing in the summer, this is a vast improvement. There are always going to be people who can be standing with a Virginia ham under each arm and complain they have no bread.


If you do what you agreed to do in the interview, do your job the best you can, make the customers happy, del on time, make yourself look presentable, meaning shower, brush your teeth, wash your clothes more than once every other month, then as long as the miles are on your truck every week, sit back, collect your check, watch the news, and let them do them. Maybe you are right and the place is going to pot quick, but maybe all this is changed for the better and it will take a few quarters to show!

 

How many staple customers have you been going to latley? Such as Budweiser, conagra, Clorax, ect? Budweiser probably a lot. They might pull out of it but they have been losing money every quarter strait for the last 4 years. Only had one profitable qaurter in the past 4 years of 23 cents a share and that was back in 2010 I believe. In three years I watched the debt load go from 80 mil to what it is now. What are some other new customers you have go to? They used to do overflow from JB hunt all the time.

 

Sarge, if your getting 25K a week, you're running illegal.
It is all in your dispatcher. That bonehead I had made me sit for days. Sometimes I would get two restarts a week. Many weeks that happened. Everyone has a different situation. I'm glad your doing good. As soon as my year was up, I moved on. I even cleaned the truck out with 409. It was spotless when I took it to the Denton facility. Keep on truckin.

 

I think the best way to sum the situation at USA Truck is is to think of the company as a ship at sea. It has a big hole in the bottom and is sinking. It's been sinking for a long time and the crew has just now discovered the leak. It's still taking on water and till the hole is fixed it's not safe from sinking. There will come a time when the amount of water inside the ship will finally sink the ship if the leak is not fixed and SOON! What some of the company defenders are doing is sitting on the main deck sunning themselves saying there is no danger of sinking because we are moving across the water. I don't know if the crew can fix the hole or not, I do know the ship is still sinking.