Rates are crashing and fuel to the moon!

Werner’s best recruiting incentive was offering health insurance day one on the job. Also a standard life insurance policy with very affordable rates on increased amounts.

 

This is going to hurt Werner in some non-obvious ways. I'm certain they'll lose drivers with tenure over this. They will have to bring in new drivers which will cost money in other areas.

 

Werner was always one of the better managed megas when CL Werner was CEO. Profitable and didn't have massive amounts of debt. They're not a USXpress. It seems a little concerning because I don't remember a company their size cutting out a 401k match before. Maybe it happens i just didn't know? I doubt they're anywhere near bankruptcy. They're either out there on an island by themselves with a great new cost savings measure or they're the trend setter. It's an easy way to save a lot of money. 401k match - another casualty of the wide open borders illegal alien truck driver invasion.

 

Didn't Werner get hit with a $90 million verdict for an accident in Texas ? Maybe they ran out of appeals.

 

I think they'll lose less than you'd think - and far less than they should. Based on Schneider's numbers, less than 70% of drivers contribute to the 401K (makes no sense to me, but there you have it). Of those who do contribute, most have no conscious thoughts about it - it's just something that happens and this cut doesn't change their net pay. Amongst the long term drivers there will be a lot of angry hemming and hawing, then they'll just keep doing their thing.

If Werner just cut pay by 3%, there would be open revolt. This way there isn't as much of an obvious sting.

 

I agree with Gentleroger, I doubt it. Over in the FCC thread when a driver brought up that FCC had discontinued the 401k match, without sending out any kind of public service announcement to the drivers mind you, you had all kinds of FCC drivers coming out to write paragraph length posts defending FCC's decision. One driver even wrote, and I quote:

"I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner."

You also had plenty of drivers of FCC's talking about how 401k's weren't efficient ways to invest, how because you have a vesting schedule in 401k's then that meant that contributing to a 401k wasn't efficient (even drivers who had been there long enough to be fully vested were saying this), etc etc.

This is the financial literacy of your average truck driver. Now Werner probably doesn't have the cult (I don't really know a better word to describe writing paragraphs to defend your company from cutting your 401k match without an official notice to drivers) that FCC seems to have fostered from the group who post in that thread, but I'm sure the financial illiteracy among the Werner drivers remains the same.

I think Gentleroger was spot on in his post.

Will be interesting to see whether Werner stays afloat, or gets gobbled up by another publicly traded mega.

 

I just noticed the Swift terminal in Martinsburg, WV is permanently closed.

 

I remember that. Everyone was #####en at the guy that brought it up. Like he was the bad guy

 

The couple of jobs I’ve had I didn’t make my choice based on getting a few percent added to retirement, just as I don’t make my investment decisions based on getting a couple percent from an employer.

 

I suppose it’s not as common in trucking, but in a former life, the company matched 9% if we put in 5. That got to be six figures QUICK.

Also, when facing retirement, those “couple percent” over a working life would easily compound into a pretty serious pile of dough, and be the difference between an comfy dotage or walking the side of the highway collecting cans.