The day to day ramblings of the LTL business.

My boys collect die cast trucks too. They keep them in a special display case they built themselves.

A few months ago they broke a dinner plate, and as a joke they arranged it in the wife's China cabinet and put their Swift truck on it's side amidst the broken pieces. I thought it was pretty funny, but Mama wasn't amused.

 

Thats one of them where you take the boy to his room, yelling all the way... once in the room tell him, ya know, that was pretty #### good. Heres a fiver .... dont tell your mum..

 

Yeah, we all got trade secrets on a corporate levels. I dont think any of us operational peons lurking TTR will have any classified info that will make another company rich or sink our parent companies. I dont know why XPO would be pissed at YRC for poaching their staff. Thought we'd be doing them a favour by adopting all their village idiots.

What I heard, XPO is run just as bad as YRC. These "execs" are just professional decision makers that get paid ungodly amounts of money for running us into the ground. Its all just spreadsheets and policy memos to them that they crap out based on "recent ground breaking research from American Trucking Research Institute Association".

Every month we get new policies of what we can and can't do because of this "research". Anyway. XPO can have their idiot execs back as far as I care. If we really picked that many up, we are more screwed than we were for the past 8 years.

 

Yard jockeying for a retail outfit during the silly season is good for ya'.... I did it for Best Buy for a few years. Best maneuvering course you'll ever get. Hectic isn't even the word, though. You'll get a first hand view of why you see yard jockeys flying around at 25-30 mph in parking lots.

It's fun, I'd do it again, but at my present gig if they need help one of the senior guys always snags it. Never makes it down the board as far as I am.

 

Yeah they will be alright LOL!

 

OK, don't give up. But a word to the wise, DO NOT GO INTO A CREDIT UNION WHERE YOU ARE NOT A MEMBER, and ask to join, SO YOU CAN GET A LOAN!
Establish yourself first with the credit union. Build up a decent savings account, maintain your checking account so there are no problems. THEN and only then, you can hit them up for a loan. But start out small. You need to build your credit up with them, if you think you will ever get a mortgage through them.
There is more than one credit union in your area, wherever you are. But in most areas, credit unions have qualifications that you must meet, before they will let you join. Lots of them let you join, based on your employment. Check with your company, and see if they are a part of a credit union, or if there is a credit union that recognizes their employees for eligibility. Some based on your union. Some based on your religion, (yeah, I know, I'm not gonna get into that argument, either.)
Utah is kind of different. (No schidt......) Credit unions in this state used to let anyone join who lived within a certain geographical area. I believe that has changed now though.
Take a look at the history of credit unions vs banks, and you will see where they are coming from.

 

Yeah I agree, there's plenty of threads on here about XPO and YRC and all kinds of rumors floating around about what's gonna happen with both of these companies. Latest I heard is that UPS is planning on buying out YRC. If that happens, that would basically make UPS the largest LTL outfit out there.

I guess we gotta wait and see what happens in the future, because it's all rumors and speculations for now.

 

It was the opposite for me when I worked at IBC. For some reason, the jockey position always went to the junior man. All the senior drivers acted like it was beneath them to yard jockey. I personally never had a problem with it. It was easy work and I got paid just the same, either way.

Now yard jockeying at Amazon or the Post Office during Peak Season is a completely different story. Forget about safety rules or flashing 4 ways or honking the horn, it's a complete madhouse in there. A lot of times the jockey can't actually do their job properly with trucks parked all over the place. It definitely test your patience... and forget about taking any naps, because it's constant rush rush rush.

 

Exact same rumour I heard. UPS wants to buy out all of YRC so they can crush ODFL, thus making them the sole global competitor against FedEx.
It's not just LTL, all the major hitters want to establish THE biggest global network.

YRC is getting on board with adopting tons of online accounts for residential freight. They think it is the next big thing. Reality is, freight is garbage right now. All the money is in parcel service. During our last staff meeting we were told FxF is struggling on the freight side cause many of their FxF account managers migrated to parcel. Just way more profit in there.

Then you got the issue with manpower on the freight side. For the majority of companies, we have more freight available than drivers to move it. For any outsider reading this... local trucking companies are also hurting for drivers. We have a severe driver shortage industry wide.

There is an interesting phenomenon going about. Certain companies will receive "spikes" in sales every month. What happens is shippers rely on Company A to deliver their freight.... then it turns out they don't have enough drivers to move that freight fast enough... so the shippers move to Company B. All of a sudden Company B has a influx of sale, but again, they also don't have the drivers to move the freight fast enough on a consistent level... so that freight will get pushed to Company C... then Company D... before it gets shuffled back to Company A.

It's all one hellish cycle. One usually carriers get to enjoy at the drivers expense who have to pick up this random fluctuation of work and make it work within their already chaotic work schedule.

Usually it goes along the lines "don't let this account escape, we JUST picked it up".

 

What do you think will happen if UPS does buy out YRC? I can only make speculations an assumptions, since I don't work for UPSF no more, but with Coyote Logistics bought out last year, and possibly buying out YRC in the future, somethings gotta give, whether it's pay, bennies, or union contracts.