Yellow Freight closure thread

It's incredible how low Yellows rates must have been. I wasn't expecting a lot of freight to be onboarded to OD because our rates are so high, but I wasn't expecting volumes to completely drop either. We didn't even maintain volume.

 

We were dirt cheap on all the high volume national stuff, except for the government stuff. The YRC network was also really cheap for your normal ltl freight, Holland wasn't cheap but was below what similar regional carriers would charge, and their next day by X time guarantee was a money loser because they couldn't meet it most of the time, not sure on New Penn network but I'm sure it was priced closed to the Holland network levels of being cheaper than other regionals.

 

It's bad. I got laid off from big green last winter going into spring. A couple dock guys, a combo, and another 1-2 drivers got cut this past fall. Right now I hear from old coworkers the extraboard guys are starving if they don't bag out when possible. Dock guys all have 1 day mandatory off a week. They were doing that last winter, all winter. P&D are all under 45 hours with lower seniority down to 30-35 a week. Linehaul is being divvied up as best as can be to keep people from falling behind on bills. Lots of disgruntlement from what I hear.

I've seen Fedex Ground linehaul spots hiring here. Contractors of course, 24 bucks an hour. Central is always hiring. But at like .65 cpm and line works the dock for peanuts too. Most class A stuff here is mid-20s an hour as of this past year. 2 years ago you literally couldn't get clean CDLs in the door for less than 30-33 bucks an hour. Anything involving manual labor was a struggle to hire at less than 35/hr. Last job I had was TWIC/Hazmat spotless record, nanny cam fuel hauling. And I ran wide ### open as fast as possible on load pay to break a measly 25/hr straight pay. No OT.

The sugar high of covid has worn off. Trucking as a far as a driver goes has never been worse for wages if you are looking for a job right now. You're better off running a forklift in my AO.

 

The pendulum always swings the other direction. I think that dynamic isn't limited to just trucking, but a swath of industries world way. Much in the way that it used to be a worker's market, we've moved back to the employer's market. I posted a help desk technician role in May with a hybrid 3 day in office position. Didn't post salart for it, but the role was hiring in at $80k with no experience expectation with upward mobility and a nearly unlimited certification/tuition benefit.

600 applications within DAYS. Even after filtering out all of the people that aren't even located within driving distance, there were still ~250 applicants fighting for one job. Even crazier was how staggering the amount of senior level engineers/architects or mid-career engineers/architects with a Master's degree was. During COVID I wouldn't have been able to get a 10th of that volume without posting a $110k salary AND full remote work.