Mikes Book Club 2020: Old Dominion Helping the World Keep Promises (2011)

I saw bowling was on TV yesterday lol

 

So I’m sure some of you reading this work for Old Dominion, how do you like working for Old Dominion?

 

Old Dominion 1959-1969 Years of Transition

So the end of the 1950s for Old Dominion started with a little bit of a lovers quarrel for Old Dominion. As we know they bought out the routes of a larger company Bottoms-Fiske and the two companies were run as separate companies for a while.

However the Old Dominion Brothers wanted to shape things up at Bottoms-Fiske, because old management at Bottoms-Fiske was still running the day to day operation and were trying to keep the Old Dominion Boys away.

However, it was time for Old Dominion management to take charge at Bottoms-Fiske and get rid of old management and that's what they did. Old Management at Bottoms-Fiske retired and The Old Dominion Boys took over.


The Teamsters Union was never fans of Old Dominon and the Old Dominion Boys never really got along well with the Teamsters Union back during the strike of 1953. Anyhow, when old management at Bottoms-Fiske took off, the union told The Old Dominion Boys that the drivers and mechanics and dock workers at Bottoms-Fiske were part of the union. Anyhow, the boys told the union to hold a vote and in August 27 and 28 in 1959 the workers at Bottom-Fiske held a vote.

The workers voted in the union and, that left Earl and Jack the Old Dominion Boys with an interesting problem, what to do with the union. The boys hired a labor relations lawyer who went down the line of options for them.

The first option was sign the union contract which would raise Bottoms-Fiske operating cost to $400,000 a year which wouldn't do because Bottoms-Fiske best year turned a profit of $125,000.

The second option was to let Bottoms-Fiske workers strike and bankrupt the company and it would get shut down.

Or the third option was to work through the strike and try to bust the union that way.

The trouble, was Old Dominion the Congdon's more specifically pretty much mortgaged their entire life to purchase Bottoms-Fiske a union strike which was pretty much on the way could potentially bankrupt Old Dominion and Bottoms-Fiske and take the Congdon's down with it.

Through September of 1959 the union and Old Dominion Boys had a series of talks and negotiations, which really were not going to, to well.

In November 7 1959 the teamsters union and Bottoms-Fiske management came to an in-pass.

They couldn't come to an agreement and scheduled some negotiations for December 8.

However, 2 days later, after the 7th negotiation had stalled out, the union called the Bottoms-Fiske employees out on strike.

On November 9th Earl Jr, went to a movie in High Point, NC and after the movie stopped by the High Point terminal. He saw all 41 dock workers on strike. There were only 2 guys working on the dock.

As the workers struck Earl and Bottoms-Fiske management rounded up some workers Earl Jr, though had to get out on the road and cross the picket line. He grabbed his .38 put it on the passenger seat and crossed the picket line and was accompanied by a one armed dock foreman who escorted Earl in his pick up truck. Earl Jr, bob tailed a semi tractor to the Winston-Salem terminal and picked up a loaded trailer and hauled it back to High Point where they drove through the picket line again.

At 4:00am that morning Jack Congdon came to town with a bus load (35) drivers from the Old Dominion, Richmond terminal who were going to help Bottoms-Fiske out of the jam.

However bad things were on the horizon as the strike was about to take a bad turn.

 

The Bottoms-Fiske Strike Turns Violent

Once the union got word, that Bottoms-Fiske was operating at full capacity without them things in the strike took a turn for the worst.

Bottoms-Fiske trucks were shot at, stoned and attacked. A car load of men with pistols pulled up along side a Bottoms-Fiske truck and waved there gun around. They scared the driver so much (he was an Old Dominion Driver helping out.) that the truck driver did a U-turn and ran back to the terminal and punched out and ran back to Richmond, VA.

The teamsters didn't stop though at running after the drivers. They attacked all kinds of people at Bottoms-Fiske and even the terminal it's self.

The Teamsters blew up the front of the Bottoms-Fiske terminal in High Point.

In fact the Teamsters also called up the Yellow Cab Company and told the owner of the company to stop sending non-striking drivers as fares over to the Bottoms-Fiske terminal or else the cab drivers would also be beaten up.

As December of 1959 went on attacks and violence on the Bottoms-Fiske terminals escalated it was a mess of sticks of TNT being thrown everywhere.

Drivers at Bottoms-Fiske started packing heat in the late 1950s and there were even signs at gaurd shacks saying BOTTOMS-FISKE DRIVERS PLEASE CHECK WEAPONS AT GUARD BOOTH

While the violent strike was going on, from 1959 well into 1960 in July of 1960 Bottoms-Fiske and the teamsters held another negotiation and by that time the strikers were trying to rescue there jobs.

As time went on the strikers got burned out and one by one dropped out. The strike lasted 17 months before Bottoms-Fiske was able to succeed in busting the union.

While Bottoms-Fiske won the war, they also sustained heavy casualties. The company lost a lot of money and a lot of customers. Infact Bottoms-Fiske was so drained money wise they didn't buy any new equipment for 2 years.

 

Bottoms-Fiske and Old Dominion Merger

Long story short, once the strike was over, with all the strike business behind them, the Congdon's decided it was time to change things and it was agreed to merge Bottoms-Fiske with Old Dominion and create Old Dominion Freight Line and have OD go from Virginina now well into the Carolina's.

 

I don't think so, it didn't say, but I don't think doubles were a thing yet back then. I know they had shorter trailers, and doubles had been invented by CF by that time, but I was under the impression that OD as a regional LTL carrier back in those days was still running 40ft or 48ft trailers.