Cliff's Announcement and Company Transition

Before I saw that memo I was being told 3 days max. I was told that back in February. In December at my orientation i was told 5 max. But I was usually home 4 anyways. I stay out 5-6 weeks at a time I am not coming back early. I just do not answer my phone. I am usually not in a place to answer it anyways when home. My FM never tells me when to come back out and I never ask. I get home and just come back either the evening of day 3 or 4. I am usually itching to get back out after 3 days anyways.

 

seen that with several companies over the years. I ran a dock in Memphis in 2000 and had a driver for a company in my door getting loaded. He came in and said take the load off. He had just been instructed to take his truck to a lot and drop it. A bus ticket was waiting on him to get him home. I felt bad for him, he looked like he was about to cry and I didnt blame him. Heard no one knew. Main office was pad locked and the guys who worked there were not allowed in for three weeks to clear their lockers out. no one got the last pay check.

 

When I was driving for them it was 5 days then they switched to a regional format that started a furry of turn over. USA was the classic example of a trucking outfit switching to regional without having the freight base to support it so that drivers could still make a living. Cliff has always expected the rest of the company to believe that he knows trucking and where its heading and where to take it. His running of this company shows that he doesn't.

 

Although Cliff Beckham has run this company into the ground I would like to believe that he is a good enough man to try to use any remaining cash to get drivers home even if they don't get their last paycheck.

 

No. It won't work that way. Trucks will have to go to nearest yard. You will be on your own.

 

In a worse case situation I doubt Cliff Beckham will be making any decisions. Remember if this happens the company is kaput. The bank will most likely have seized any remaining liquid capitol. Comdata will have the fuel cards turned off. Again I direct you to the Arrow truck forum or read some of the articles in this website. In my previous post I used conservative figures on the cost to get the drivers home. I suspect the bank will direct most of the drivers to surrender their trucks to the nearest Freightliner/International/Paccar dealer, and after that the drivers will most likely be left on their own. If funds are made available it most likely will be the bank doing it.

I hope of course if this happens another company will buy them out and fix things with the drivers being laid over just for a few days at most.

One more thing, I have read through most of the Arrow forum threads. In several of them you can see where drivers were defending Arrow and saying nothing was wrong. I can't stress this enough! Don't risk being stranded! Make sure you have the funds to get home! Don't believe what you hear management say, believe what you see! No need to jump ship right now! Just be smart and cover your rear!

 

I get the impression that they switched to freightliners because International wasn't going to extend them anymore credit. I guess we will all see what happens next month

 

I don't know. I would guess it's either one of two reasons or a mix of both. 1. They were having some trouble with the prostars. 2. Freightliner gave them a much better deal. I was actually of the understanding their bank was financing their tractor purchases.

 

This company sure is getting a lot of attention since Cliff announced the financial state. Next month will be interesting. Its still speculation at this point.