Yellow Freight closure thread

I picked up at a warehouse in Savanah GA yesterday and noticed 5 empty yrc trailers sitting against a fence they didn't even bother to close the doors on .

 

Not sure how many people are following this, but I got a bunch more insight on the layoffs from management.

For the sake of this writeup, I am neither pro union nor pro company. I fall under pro keeping my job. I did get this info from management who is also pro keeping their jobs.

So our original strategy was to send out trailers as full as possible to peddle freight. To be honest, a lot of drivers got screwed because that usually meant leaving late.

Less time for deliveries because you had to cut off for pick-ups. Management got a gold star for the day because freight was off the dock and any returns were counted against the driver.

Then One Yellow happened. And man things got wonky.

All trailers had to have at least 10 bills and the delivery parameters were set to 2.5 stops per hour. This raised a few issues because it disregarded a few things.

1. Drive time from terminal to first stop
2. Excessive drive time from one stop to another
3. Excessive layover (where you can spend 7 hours for one bill. (...US Foods *cough-cough*)

It gets more extreme.

Let's say we have 20 drivers. Our average bills per hour software states we can only send 17 based on our bill count per hour. But given the layover and travel time you might actually need 25 drivers.

So to combat this we are sneaking out drivers without logging into a workflow to do pickups. That way it doesn't count against us.

The end result was returns and freight not being picked up. But to upper upper it didn't matter as long as the Excel spreadsheets looked correct.

It's an insane system.

 

Wow, not knocking you here with any anti-union spiel (obviously UPS & ABF are doing things differently with profit resulting) but how the #### does anything get done with nonsense like that? I hardly follow all of what you're explaining but it's pretty clear it's complete dysfunction going on there. No wonder.

 

UPS is in strike talks and ABF is laying off. I’d say companies are tired of the unions telling them how to run a business. Just what I am thinking for what I see…

 

You don't lay people off just because you're ill with the union......you lay people off because there's no work to be had. Furthermore, ABF has a pretty solid relationship with the Teamsters.

 

I'd say it's time for contract renewal and they've been doing this for decades. Nothing new or surprising and both are very profitable companies so have to be well managed. Freight is slow and has been a long time. Not surprising people will get laid off.

 

ABF just signed a new 5 year deal with the Teamsters.

 

And,
TForce, Teamsters reach tentative 5-year contract (yahoo.com)

 

@Opus I knew that. Meant UPS.. but it just reinforced what I said and doesn't sound like they're tired of working with the teamsters just yet. Sounds like they want to keep piling up the profits.

 

People forget that contracts work both ways.

On the surface one can say that we are greedy and spoiled and make outlandish demands. The reality is we make at least $6 per hour less than the next non-union carrier (at least in my area).

The big weenie is the working conditions. ABF for example just renewed their contract. This put their pay scale just a bit over R&L, but they also included things like getting MLK day off and a provision from preventing their linehaul guys from getting replaced by a self-driving trucks. UPS wants air conditioning inside their trucks so their drivers don't die on the job from heat exhaustion.

On the flip side, management also gets concessions. My buddy showed up for work late four times and was fired. He was not fired for being late; he was fired for violating the contract.

Management looked at the personal circumstances and determined he had a legit reason for each tardiness but they had to fire him based on the contract. Our TM didn't want to fire him and brought him back the next week cause he is a good worker.

We also had a guy that nobody, and I mean NOBODY liked and he was fired for some contract technicality . It was something along of taking too many breaks or going over his 30 minute lunch break. Both management and Teamster was happy to see him go.

Local issues are dealt with locally. The key benefit we have is HR doesn't get involved. It does give our local management some discretion on who stays or goes, and this privilege is extended to the rest of us.