Yellow Freight closure thread

The trailer fleet badly needed upgrades, the tractor fleet just needed maintained instead of so quickly upgraded. We used third party at the two terminals I was at and one of them did a good job, had a shop near equipment could go to if needed, the other just had service trucks and did what the could, had a great trailer tech. The two inhouse shops at Columbus and Cincy were awful. We had a brand new trailer that a marker light went out, they spliced a wire from pigtail box up the nose of the trailer and screwed a whole new light in to the top and then stapled the wire to the nose box,instead of figuring out the problem. They would put steel plates over a hole in the floor instead of properly fixing it which of course would get ripped up by someone with forks down going into the trailer. Truck repair at them were almost non-existent and was more we just never saw that truck again.

The system for tracking forklift inventory didn't actually work, you would have to enter them once a week but it didn't save the terminal inventory only the hours on the lift. Tractor and Trailer inventory system didn't work either but that was being upgraded and was more an issue of terminals not using the new system because they never trained on it. They had no system for tracking shop inventory at all.It was left entirely to the local terminals to pick the hotel linehaul stayed at.

 

Well explained. But I respectfully want to push back on the last thing you mentioned. To me, it seems like upper leadership maliciously planned the closure months in advance. They knew if they failed to pay into the benefits, the insurer would stop coverage to the members; thus triggering a strike that would shut down operations. They could then say "the strike was an unforeseen circumstance" when in reality this was probably carefully planned, orchestrated, and executed. They then worked everyone to the exact point where they knew they could legally get out of the WARN act liability.

For them to say they were acting in good faith is laughable. They have done virtually NOTHING in good faith since acquiring the regionals that they dragged down with them. Now do not get me wrong, the Union is EQUALLY as bad. There is no lesser evil in this one. This was a team effort to ensure the conditions existed to where the company was unrecoverable. For those that don't know, most of this was hinged on the Union blocking the company from implementing Phase 2. This required linehaul drivers to perform some dock work and maybe P&D functions. It is a hybrid position that was called Utility Driver and would have affected 800 people. I actually done this when I worked at Reddaway as a linehaul driver about 12 years ago. I had to rest over in Spokane WA and they had nothing for me ready yet. So they had me come in after my 10 hours off and I ended up taking an empty trailer 15 miles across town and grabbed a loaded trailer. This loaded trailer ended up being my front trailer that I had to drop off in Missoula MT on my way back before going back home in Three Forks MT. It really was not a big deal and I got two extra hours of pay.