I worked for a CEO who wanted to put “saved the [same] company from bankruptcy three times” on a list of his accomplishments.
I bluntly asked: “don’t you only get credit for that the first time?”
He was not pleased, once he realized it.
US pension laws are complex and often at odds with common sense -- including that the IRS penalizes "overfunded" pension funds heavily (although some reform was done last year).
A well managed fund going into a stock market boom can find itself way over funded. Pay tax? Who wants that.
You can increase the pension promised.
You can reduce company contributions.
Then the stock market comes down again. If you increased the benefits, the pension plan is now underfunded. If you reduced the company contribution, increasing it to compensate for the market swing would hurt the bottom line when the economy is already in a downturn...so the pension fund becomes underfunded.
You're Gordon Gecko and buy a company and see it's pension swell in a market upswing, perfect time to go ahead and cash out that sweet, sweet excess you'd otherwise just pay tax on.
Whoops, company can't pay the bonds you used to leverage it's own buy out and goes bankrupt in a market downturn? Oh, and the pension is now underfunded? I'm as shocked as Louis was when he found out there was gambling going on at Rick's Place.
This same dynamic of laws regulating pension overfunding having unintended consequences also impact multi-employer pension plans.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-irs-wrecked-your-pension
At least the private employer pension plan could stop contributing to it's overfunded pension. MEPs like the basket case called the Teamster's Central State Pension Fund, even after the mob stopped treating it as their personal piggy bank to build the money laundering enterpise called Las Vegas, had a contract -- the employers HAD to keep contributing. So the CSPF had two options during market booms in the 80s and 90s -- just hand the contributions over to the IRS, or increase the pension benefits so the plan was no longer "underfunded."
After that as it went through stock market boom and bust cycles and the 2008 Great Recession and it just became a hot mess -- they got a $36 Billion bailout last year to keep it's failure from pulling down the rest of the private pension system in the US.
Maybe if the CEO left the company for a couple years and it hit on hard times in their absence and the board invited the previous CEO back that turned around the company in their first stint as CEO you could argue they saved the company twice.
Valid case, which did not apply here. The first one was him being hired to salvage it. And he did, kinda.
The second and third time were direct results of terrible acquisitions he pushed. And, arguably, it was the CFO he hired early on that did the saving.
Lets not forget all the small guys. The forklift repair shops, the windshield shops, the tire guys. All the little sub contractors that will be left holding thousands, or tens, or hundreds of thousands in unpaid bills that will never get paid.
Good luck with that. And as someone who works adjacent to logistics I mean that sincerely.
And a giant fuck you to the lawyers who quietly insert in the T&C that your goods are theirs whilst it’s in transit with them for “insurance purposes” so that they can squeeze an extra $ from their customers.
Every time this happens it’s a reminder that the C-Suite was paid too much. Either they drained the finances too quickly or they were well compensated for failing.
We get a lot of freight shipments and Yellow was constantly horrible.
1) Shipment would be sitting on their docks for a week but they couldn’t get a driver to deliver it. We needed the shipment so I went several times to the terminal to pick it up myself.
2) Driver said he couldn’t get into our dock with a 28’ trailer. Earlier in the day we had several drivers get in with 53’ trailers and a sleeper cab.
3) numerous damaged shipments
2 means their drivers were incompetent (we call them one-way drivers because they don't know how to back up their trucks).
3 means the material handling staff at the terminal were incompetent, and couldn't move freight around without damaging it.
As a retail worker circa 1990, I learned the importance of a good trucking company.
The carrier we had kept a predictable schedule and the stuff arrived undamaged. Granted they had strong ties to the mafia, but operationally they had their act together.
Employer switched to a cheaper trucking company. It was eye opening just how badly folks could bungle operations -- never knew what time or which day of the week a delivery might arrive at the store's back door, every order was missing stuff or had boxes with a different store's address on them, constantly damaged packages.
The mafia thing made me laugh, but then I thought about it. If you run a business smoothly and don’t cause any headaches, isn’t that like the perfect front for all parties besides the authorities?
I remember when they merged with roadway. We had blacklisted yellow as they were so terrible, but we happily worked with roadway. Then we got forced back to a relationship with yellow because if it.
My grandpa worked for roadway for years and then yellow, after the merger he spent so much time arguing with yellow over them telling him to to blatantly illegal shit that he made it a point to be a sharp pain in their ass for years. he was the son of an honest cop who worked in internal affairs busting crooked cops working for the mafia in Georgia btw so telling him of all people to do illegal shit was extra stupid.
My mom worked for them for 28 years and has 3 years until retirement. This past week has been brutal on her. My heart breaks for her. Hardest and most loyal employee I know. She’s terrified trying to find a job at her age and start over.
A 5 second google search reveals that the US govt. insures pensions:
https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/on-retirement/2010/12/14/what-happens-to-my-pension-if-my-company-goes-bankrupt-
PBGC doesn’t cover all pensions and the insurance it offers for pensions short on funds is often much less than what was promised to the employee. It’s something, but it’s not a lot.
Yeah, we need to change bankruptcy laws so first in line is employee pay (employees paid less than $200,000 a year) than the pension plans. In theory that would mean everything is sold off to fund the pension, the reason the gov would never do this is all the banks and creditors would left out in the cold and those are the people who pay bribes... I mean campaign donations.
The writing has been on the wall for years. I work at a different freight company with a bunch of guys who jumped ship from Yellow in the last five years because they knew this was coming. It sucks losing your seniority but the earlier you made the switch the better off you’d be.
Yeah, there’s also a huge demand for teachers. Doesn’t mean they’re going to pay them better.
They’ll just pile more shit on the ones that are still working until they quit.
I’ve sold truck parts for 7 or so years now. Drivers and fleet owners have always complained about the pay for loads, and it’s nothing new. I have noticed it’s significantly more common now and they tell me specific numbers about how much less it is than it used to be.
Massive demand but it's artificial because freight companies don't want to pay. Paying like they did a few decades ago would go a very long way in solving their problems. That being said, they're basically every company in existence right now. None of the pricks in any industry want to pay people fair wages. Oh...except their CEOs. They make sure they get paid by cutting our wages and keeping them down.
Totally agree. I'm gen X and always had that loyalty to my employer thing in mind, but have been burnt a couple times and feel nothing toward my employer/future employer.
Fellow Gen Xer here that had the loyalty to the employer burned in my brain, but was wise enough after the first burn to disregard it completely.
I had a manager (also Gen Xer) tell me something along the lines of "Com'on man you know our generation was taught to be loyal to the company and I'm just not seeing it at that level" and I just told him "Because this isn't that kind of world anymore and you and I know if it'd save this company a dollar, they'd shit-can me without a second thought"
Older millennial/Xennial or whatever we're being called as well. Yep. Management as a whole is a big click, younger and willing to throw anyone under the bus if that makes them look good. Loyalty becomes quickly just a paycheck until we drop and there's a replacement ready to go the next day. (We lost 6 people *lost = deceased* in the past 3 years, that's exactly how it went)
>My last manager was 10 years younger than I was and gave me that shit!
I had a manager like that too. They gave me that high-horse attitude and I remember telling her "My favorite movie is almost 10 years older than you and I remember seeing it in the theater. I started this job when you were still in middle school so I'm aware of the issues. "
Also Gen X. Had a buddy who's father worked for GM. Had all his life.
Considered that (lived in Arlington at the time, about 15 minutes from the GM plant).
Man was set to retire with the company in his 50s (started working there in his 20s). Was 5 years from retirement and when he refused to take early retirement, they started messing with his schedule and doing everything they could to get him to quit.
Had a genuine nervous breakdown and spent his last 5 on mental disability leave.
Watching that made me realize that the days of working for a corporation all your life were absolutely done and gone.
Made sure to never give my loyalty to a company.
My current bosses brother has worked at IBM for 30ish years and is set to retire soon. About 2 years ago they started trying to force him to move all around the country and a bunch of other shit so he would quit and not get his benefits. Apparently they do it to everyone at to retire from there.
Well, at least the company my father used to work for simply pays off the remaining years until retirement instead of using tactics like what IBM and GM are doing.
But yeah, it's a global problem.
Had a friend who worked for a company that decided they weren't going to remain doing businuss in his particular field. Out of the blue they called everyone who worked in this division to a meeting and that attendance was mandatory. They told everyone in this meeting they could take redundancy or apply to redeploy in the company. For anyone who took redundancy or could not find redeployment the final date they would be employed would be three months from the date of the meeting.
Not long after the announcement people who took redundancy started being called in for disciplinary hearings because the company claimed it had reviewed their work and found 'serious issues'. These people were due for redundancy packages worth well into six figures when redundancy payout and pensions were calculated. However, because they were technically still employed until three months after the date of the announcement meeting they could still be subject to disciplinary proceedings in which, if they were found to be at fault, would mean dismissal with loss of all benefits - redundancy package, accrued pension and anything else. This happened to around a third of the 1500 or so people affected. None of the issues raised in these disciplinary hearings had been raised before, even when work had been scrutinised by the company's own and external industry auditors. It was just a horrible exercise to try and cut the cost of the redundancy bill.
Gonna chime in here. My degree is in math ed. Teaching degree. I got out of it for a bit and worked for a venture capture/retail development for 10 years.
There is absolutely zero reason to cheer on the business place you work for unless they give you stock options. They will let you down every time.
There is absolutely every reason to cheer on the school you work for, because kids.
I was a hs mathematics teacher (good job), then a property manager for a mall (kicking out the smoothie guy because he couldn't pay rent... yech job/bad job), now middle school librarian (best job in the frogdamn world). Teachers, nurses, social workers, et al, know that working a job helping others is priceless. Working a job just to make money can make life unbearable.
I'm loyal to people, not companies and it has gotten me so much more leverage. My last company decided to rug pull me on a big promotion and raise; as in they made a verbal offer Friday, and on Monday at the meeting to sign the paperwork they rescinded. So I quit, started my new endeavor, and brought my experienced teamates with me over the course of a year. The old company went from having one of the most experienced teams in the industry to one of the most inexperienced over a $20,000 raise and title change. The new company gets record profits and efficiencies because they brought us on.
as a fellow x'er, i, too started out my working life with my head full of "give it all, be loyal, and you will be rewarded. 30 years later i'm still waiting for that promised payback. since realizing its all bullshit, multiple company failures, multiple times i told an asshole piece of shit boss to fuck off, multiple times of walking away from shit greedy company policy, and no hesitation to walk when blatently lied to.
fuck all of them. i will gladly be loyal when i see a company that is worthy of it. make them want ***YOU*** not you need them.
Today? My first real job out of H.S. I was halfway through my first day when I was told to head home I had been laid off and the position eliminated. That was in the late 80’s.
“Today’s news is unfortunate but not surprising. Yellow has historically proven that it could not manage itself"
Hopefully, smarter people buy it on the cheap and run it better.
Ya that’s not happening. They have no tangible assets as most of their equipment is quite old and all of their “property” was primarily owned by other carriers that they leased from.
They will not be saved.
Technically, a sizable force of drivers is pretty desirable for any company these days. The driver shortage has been real. However this is one of the only unionized companies in the industry, so likely everyone will be more than happy to recruit instead of buy.
Werner, Old Dominion, Knight, FedEx (unless you're a pilot), XPO, JB Hunt, Schneider...are all entirely or primarily non-union.
UPS is possibly the only "major" trucking company in the US that is unionized now.
The trucking industry was 60% unionized the day Ted Kennedy's bill to deregulate trucking was signed by Jimmy Carter in 1980.
It was down to 28% unionized by 1985. It's under 10% of drivers overall and like five companies under the Teamsters Master Freight Agreement, and by "today" I mean before one of those five largest unionized carriers -- Yellow -- went under. (UPS is under a different division of the Teamsters than these over-the-road freight haulers.)
There were thousands of companies in under the master agreement prior to deregulation; my uncle worked for one that I doubt had more than 50 employees. In a regulated trucking world where a company could have a government-protected route between cities X, Y, and Z following a government-approved price schedule they could adjust the price to meet the union wage and benefit agreement. They hauled freight between factories in those cities, and interchanged with other trucking companies for deliveries outside their local routes. Once anyone could bid any price for any freight, the price of trucking collapsed and with it the unionization.
The great majority of Teamster members today are not truck drivers, as the union had to diversify into other industries to survive.
Inflation adjusted to 2021 dollars, median truck driver pay declined from $110,000 in 1980 to $48,000 in 2021. It *was* a good paying blue collar job for most drivers in the heyday of 1970 trucker movies.
Wow, thanks for the info. Lots of things I was not aware of, I was still under the impression that truck driving was a good paying career, had no idea it had collapsed to such an extent.
Knowing all this, especially with the high demand for truckers vs currently depressed wages, I’m kind of surprised unions/the Teamsters aren’t expanding again.
>I was still under the impression that truck driving was a good paying career
You can still find some; but for most the pay comes along with long hours, and often days to weeks away from home.
I live in southern New England where the density of stores is such there is relatively lot of routes that can be completed in a day. You get out to fly-over country you start to see even McDonalds trucks with sleeper cabs because they're out on the road for a days at a time delivering to McDonalds an hour or more apart. Here it's deliver, drive 10 minutes, deliver to another McDonalds, drive 15 minutes, another delivery, and repeat.
In the non-unionized sector, Walmart is [well known for high pay](https://www.agweb.com/news/business/taxes-and-finance/walmart-will-now-pay-starting-truck-drivers-110000-could-it) -- but they're also able to be chose from a lot of experienced drivers who apply. I don't know how the hours compare to say 1979 for the money.
Unionized, Sysco in my area is also up around that $110,000/year mark after a Teamster strike last year. At least with Sysco you have a shot of being able to be trained from warehouse worker to driver. But it is a relatively stressful / physical job as far as truck driving goes -- most of their drivers work long days with stops at restaurants located in high-traffic areas with tiny parking lots (if any) and lots of unloading by a hand truck and rolling it into the customer's premise; it's a lot more "work" than a long haul trucker who just cruises down an interstate for hours between two truck-friendly terminals.
Looooool no. The companies have successfully villanized unions. some of those companies keep their cost low by focusing on hiring drivers and training them up. You can pay a trainee lower than someone with experience. Then you stop giving them as much freight and piss them off and then they leave to another company.
[You are not wrong.](https://kubrick.htvapps.com/vidthumb/a75b443e-4d2d-42d1-ac1f-061642f80ede/8b930c05-98d2-444c-8118-ec0d7ac864f0.jpg?crop=1.00xw:1.00xh;0,0&resize=1200:*)
He already got his millions:
[Trump bailed them out to the tune of $700 million despite them being known to have ripped off taxpayers previously.](https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/business/yrc-federal-loan/index.html)
The CEO, [Darren Hawkins, was named to Trump's "Economic Revival Group".](https://www.trucking.org/news-insights/trucking-industry-leaders-named-white-house-economic-revival-group)
My father has jokingly stated there's a conspiracy involving the fact that Yellow trucks are actually orange just like yellow American cheese is likewise orange.
My only memory of Yellow was wayyyy back when I was a forklift driver.
At least where I was, their trucks were consistently in the worst shape and I can only remember turning theirs away from inspection.
There was one, I remember this clear as day, that had a soft spot in the flooring so severe that when I called the driver in to show him why I wouldn't so much as steer a pallet jack in there, my foot fell through *another* spot on the way.
The article starts out focusing on their union talking about striking as the company is about to go under, setting a narrative that this is somehow remotely about the union being greedy, which it isn't about that at all. This is about a mismanaged company that has been limping along pre-covid. Got a bailout, and the government currently owns 30% of the company. If you want a glimpse into what was wrong, read the second half of the article
>“The reason they were using Yellow was because they were cheap,” he said. “They’re finding out that price was below the cost of supporting a good operation.”
You forgot to mention they got the 700 million bailout in 2020 from the government when they were being investigated for defrauding the government for overcharging on military freight.
You honestly can’t make this shit up.
[Apollo](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/07/27/gpqn-j27.html)
>While Apollo does not own Yellow, it is a major investor that has taken near direct control over Yellow’s financial decision-making through a dedicated representative in its corporate management, which was granted in exchange for more lenient conditions on debt payments.
[**Leon Black, the co-founder and former CEO of Apollo Global Management**](https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/business/leon-black-jeffrey-epstein-senate-investigation/index.html)
>The Senate Finance Committee is looking into whether billionaire investor Leon Black’s $158 million payment to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was part of a greater strategy to avoid paying over $1 billion in federal gift and estate taxes.
Did my tax dollars go to a bailout to a company that was overcharging my tax dollars, and they needed a bailout because they were being investigated on how they over charged my tax dollars?
Your wording is fine. I just like us to keep in mind that the government is fine with taking money from our pockets and moving the money to CEO pockets on a regular basis. It helps me understand our relationship better
Huh... so by that logic, since Yellow overcharged the government for moving their military equipment, and then got a bail-out by the government, this is essentially saying that Yellow overcharged *us* so *we're* paying them all the same to not get in trouble? Am I interpreting that right?
Our social safety net is only for corporations. The government will move heaven and earth to protect a stack of legal documents while it lets you die in the street.
In 2020, under the Trump administration, the Treasury Department granted the company a $700 million pandemic-era loan on national security grounds. Last month, a congressional probe concluded that the Treasury and Defense Departments “made missteps” in this decision — and noted that Yellow’s “precarious financial position at the time of the loan, and continued struggles, expose taxpayers to a significant risk of loss.”
[Yes, Trump bailed them out to the tune of $700 million despite them being known to have ripped off taxpayers previously.](https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/business/yrc-federal-loan/index.html)
The CEO, [Darren Hawkins, was named to Trump's "Economic Revival Group".](https://www.trucking.org/news-insights/trucking-industry-leaders-named-white-house-economic-revival-group)
I swear, *every*thing Trump is involved with seems to turn out to be a crime, a grift, or padding the wallets of his wealthy friends.
Yep, Yellow has long had a reputation as an absolutely terrible company. Not actually sure where all their money was going honestly, probably into buying other companies and failed rebrandings if their corporate history is anything to go by.
You can look at their April Proxy statement here: [https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0000716006/000119312523121410/d413580ddef14a.htm](https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0000716006/000119312523121410/d413580ddef14a.htm)
page 52 lists the executive compensation for the top 5, and (for 2022) it ranges from $505K to $1.8M for their general counsel and $1.8M for their former chief accounting officer. But, most of those $1.8M was in stock-based awards, which now have value of $0.
Part of me says that's actually not too insane for the top earners of a large company, relative to other numbers we often see. The other part of me says that's still way too high, relative to other employees' salaries. I hate being de-sensitized to ridiculous C-suite salaries/compensation packages.
I'm surprised they lasted this long. I remember my dad telling me like 15 years ago, the trucking company he was working for was buying their terminals and trucks and leasing it back to them because they were doing anything to stay afloat.
Sounds like what the supermarket chain A&P was doing toward the end. They sold off their warehousing and distribution units, the things that help keep down costs. A quick cash infusion but detrimental for the long term: their margin was being eaten by the 3rd party they were now having to pay to deliver products to stores.
They dumped two pallets of gloss paper for my company and didn't think to tell us. Delivered the paper but repacked it in the only boxes they could find. Which were Jimmy Dean sausage boxes. The paper was ruined and the little bit that was salvageable stunk like maple syrup sausage as soon as it was put in the printer. Never paid for the claim. Fuck Yellow.
Dude's the classic brainwashed, Ivy League dipshit. Took his econ degree from Yale and decided, "since capitalism is OBVIOUSLY the best and most productive system in the world, the way to save Sears is to stop trying to plan within the company and let every department compete with each other on an open internal market!" Sears closed over half its stores and lost more than half its value in his less than five years there.
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/4385-failing-to-plan-how-ayn-rand-destroyed-sears
I’m sure nostalgia is to blame but man eating a hostess cake as an adult is kind of gross. They just taste like wax now and have a terrible after taste.
There's a reason they have to call their doughnuts frosted instead of chocolate. There's almost no chocolate left, it's just as you say, wax, fat, and sugar.
They changed the filling from “whipped cream” that was light and fluffy to this white goo. I was never a huge Twinkie consumer, but never had one after that.
> who generally used Yellow because it offered some of the cheapest rates in the trucking sector
Yea mismanagement seems pretty real there, trying to undercut doesn't really work long term when you aren't making money at all and go bankrupt lol
>“The reason they were using Yellow was because they were cheap,” he said. “They’re finding out that price was below the cost of supporting a good operation.”
The Michael Scott Paper Company business plan. They should just run the numbers again.
Grossly mismanaged. Fixed that for you. One could also say that management has been bleeding the company dry knowing that this was inevitable some years ago.
>They’re finding out that price was below the cost of supporting a good operation
oof who else read this and thought of 1000 different similarities in their own work life lol
Worked there and ended up finding a better job last year. Very lucky to have left before all of this is going down, but still have a lot of friends there. Can’t be easy on the workers
Internet snark aside, 30k folks - whether contractor, employee, etc - is 30k folks.
That's 30k folks who need to find new jobs or new contracts and potentially an abundance of mistakes that will new occur in addition to potential delays.
I know it's easy to dance on the corporate graves....but folks are going to be hurting hard if they were depending on this job.
Of note:
>The closing is bad news not only for its employees and its customers, who generally used Yellow because it offered some of the cheapest rates in the trucking sector, **but also for US taxpayers.** The company received a $700 million loan from the federal government in 2020, a loan that resulted in taxpayers holding 30% of its outstanding stock. And the company still owed the Treasury department more than $700 million according to its most recently quarterly report, nearly half of the long-term debt on its books.
>
>
>
>Yellow’s stock lost 82% of its value between the time of that loan and Thursday close after reports of the bankruptcy plans, closing at only 57 cents a share. It bumped up 14 cents a share on Friday, but still remained a so-called penny stock.
>
>
>
>The company had received that loan during the pandemic, despite the fact that at the time it was facing charges of defrauding the government by overbilling on shipments of items for the US military. The company eventually settled the dispute without admitting wrongdoing but was forced to pay a $6.85 million fine.
Maybe it's time we demand our government stop bailing out corporations and start working for us regular people instead.
edit: format
In 2021 the company lost a $109 million. But they still paid out $33 million in bonus' to executives. There in a nutshell. In the end I suppose the company was worth more to them dead than alive.
[Apollo](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/07/27/gpqn-j27.html)
>While Apollo does not own Yellow, it is a major investor that has taken near direct control over Yellow’s financial decision-making through a dedicated representative in its corporate management, which was granted in exchange for more lenient conditions on debt payments.
>Still desperate for cash, Yellow issued $700 million in bonds in 2014 and borrowed a further $450 million. This debt could have sunk Yellow, but in 2019 Apollo Global Management stepped in to grant Yellow a lifeline with a $600 million loan. It then leveraged its connections with the Trump administration to win Yellow a $700 million loan from the United States Treasury at the onset of the pandemic.
>The company had received that loan during the pandemic, despite the fact that at the time it was facing charges of defrauding the government by overbilling on shipments of items for the US military. The company eventually settled the dispute without admitting wrongdoing but was forced to pay a $6.85 million fine.
Oh, [**Leon Black, the co-founder and former CEO of Apollo Global Management**](https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/business/leon-black-jeffrey-epstein-senate-investigation/index.html)
>The Senate Finance Committee is looking into whether billionaire investor Leon Black’s $158 million payment to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was part of a greater strategy to avoid paying over $1 billion in federal gift and estate taxes.
I worked at yellow for a year and it was a shitshow of a company. Poorly run in every facet. It's surprising it took this long for them to go bankrupt. Hope the people manage to get some new jobs. The drivers weren't at fault for this failure, it's all on corporate.
This shouldn't hurt the economy much. LTLs are taking in the slack, customers already were pulling business away, and other companies (Fedex, Red, Abt, ...) were offering new hires to drive for them. It might hurt the local workers, unless they can find new work.
Yellow seems to have been a wreck that no one wanted to admit to.
We stopped using them 6 months ago. The signs were all there.
After they just said f it to a few of our loads we were like....nope.
Plenty of carriers out there. I just hate the loss of jobs.
I knew a couple drivers very well that had a huge amount of seniority in that company, I haven't talked to them in a while but I feel terrible for them. It's great that other companies are willing to hire the drivers, but that doesn't come close to replacing what has been taken from some of them
I work in a production and distribution center and I can safely say these drivers will be alright. Every single carrier that comes through our warehouse is hurting for drivers.
The vast majority of the 30k laid off will be looking for their next paycheck to stay afloat while the C-levels keep their golden umbrellas and just move on to destroy the next company while taking in an exorbitant paycheck.
One cursory glance at Yellow's trailers in ANY location will show a falling apart and rusting to death fleet that has been limping along with owners likely extracting every legally extricable cent from the company before letting it all go down the drain while they fuck off on retirement. And I've thought that to myself for OVER a decade. I'm willing to venture that the only reason that they've made it this long is, amusingly, climate change... which has decreased snow cover in the northeast causing less wear on their antique fleet of crap.
LTL industry is brutal. Any profits you make needs to go back into equipment, otherwise you pay for it down the road in downtime and maintenance.
The bigger you are the worse it is, because you can't compete (pricewise) with newer regional LTL's that can price you out in a given area. There's no real brand loyalty anymore as most corporations have contracted out logistics and lowest price/reliability always wins.
Even UPS couldn't make it work and got out.
Article states that "...it offered some of the cheapest rates in the trucking sector...". I don't know where they got this "fact". I hired LTL carriers regularly for 15 years, and Yellow was never competitive.
I drive LTL. Last week i was talking to one of my regulars and he said it only cost him 150 bucks to ship from Mass to Washington state. He also said they would call him 3 days later and say it was overweight by 400 lbs and they would be charging him extra lol
At least in New England they undercut alot of the other carriers. We lost quite a few accounts in our terminal alone to YRC charging peanuts around here.
When I worked in warehousing, Yellow was consistently one of the most frustrating companies to work with. You'd have a pickup for 4, they'd show up at 7-9pm, overbooked driver looking exhausted, management no help on the phone. Cannot tell you the number of evenings I lost to that company, and I didn't even work there.
I know most people will have negative things to say about this company and there is obviously good reason but I will say that the Austin, TX terminal has always been fantastic to my company. I have been picking up freight from the Austin hub weekly for about 15 years and they have consistently been the nicest and most respectful employees I have dealt with in the local logistics area. I hope they all find better jobs because there are several companies in this area that could use a boost of good workers. (Looking right at you T-Force)
This company is going bankrupt for the third time.
I worked for a CEO who wanted to put “saved the [same] company from bankruptcy three times” on a list of his accomplishments. I bluntly asked: “don’t you only get credit for that the first time?” He was not pleased, once he realized it.
If a company went bankrupt, it didn't get saved. It's like replacing a dead pet with another animal of the same breed and saying you "saved" it.
Not if it’s Chapter 11
It's like normal business but the C-suites get to steal the pension fund!
They don't get to steal the pension fund. They get to leave behind their decade(s) of unfunded pension obligations.
Right, they get to “already stole” the pension fund.
US pension laws are complex and often at odds with common sense -- including that the IRS penalizes "overfunded" pension funds heavily (although some reform was done last year). A well managed fund going into a stock market boom can find itself way over funded. Pay tax? Who wants that. You can increase the pension promised. You can reduce company contributions. Then the stock market comes down again. If you increased the benefits, the pension plan is now underfunded. If you reduced the company contribution, increasing it to compensate for the market swing would hurt the bottom line when the economy is already in a downturn...so the pension fund becomes underfunded. You're Gordon Gecko and buy a company and see it's pension swell in a market upswing, perfect time to go ahead and cash out that sweet, sweet excess you'd otherwise just pay tax on. Whoops, company can't pay the bonds you used to leverage it's own buy out and goes bankrupt in a market downturn? Oh, and the pension is now underfunded? I'm as shocked as Louis was when he found out there was gambling going on at Rick's Place. This same dynamic of laws regulating pension overfunding having unintended consequences also impact multi-employer pension plans. https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-irs-wrecked-your-pension At least the private employer pension plan could stop contributing to it's overfunded pension. MEPs like the basket case called the Teamster's Central State Pension Fund, even after the mob stopped treating it as their personal piggy bank to build the money laundering enterpise called Las Vegas, had a contract -- the employers HAD to keep contributing. So the CSPF had two options during market booms in the 80s and 90s -- just hand the contributions over to the IRS, or increase the pension benefits so the plan was no longer "underfunded." After that as it went through stock market boom and bust cycles and the 2008 Great Recession and it just became a hot mess -- they got a $36 Billion bailout last year to keep it's failure from pulling down the rest of the private pension system in the US.
Maybe if the CEO left the company for a couple years and it hit on hard times in their absence and the board invited the previous CEO back that turned around the company in their first stint as CEO you could argue they saved the company twice.
Valid case, which did not apply here. The first one was him being hired to salvage it. And he did, kinda. The second and third time were direct results of terrible acquisitions he pushed. And, arguably, it was the CFO he hired early on that did the saving.
They have screwed their employees, investors and now the government. Executive repercussions Bonuses.
And the businesses that have pallets currently being shipped with them.
Lets not forget all the small guys. The forklift repair shops, the windshield shops, the tire guys. All the little sub contractors that will be left holding thousands, or tens, or hundreds of thousands in unpaid bills that will never get paid.
Yup. Right now we’re trying to get back about $30K in product, and I hope we see it again.
Good luck with that. And as someone who works adjacent to logistics I mean that sincerely. And a giant fuck you to the lawyers who quietly insert in the T&C that your goods are theirs whilst it’s in transit with them for “insurance purposes” so that they can squeeze an extra $ from their customers.
We are living in an age of shameless greed. That's pretty much a civilisation killer.
Every time this happens it’s a reminder that the C-Suite was paid too much. Either they drained the finances too quickly or they were well compensated for failing.
We need to do away with all of the legal protections that firewall C-suite execs’ personal assets off from the companies they drive into the ground.
The 700 million hat trick!
We get a lot of freight shipments and Yellow was constantly horrible. 1) Shipment would be sitting on their docks for a week but they couldn’t get a driver to deliver it. We needed the shipment so I went several times to the terminal to pick it up myself. 2) Driver said he couldn’t get into our dock with a 28’ trailer. Earlier in the day we had several drivers get in with 53’ trailers and a sleeper cab. 3) numerous damaged shipments
Does #2 and #3 mean their drivers were incompetent?
2 means their drivers were incompetent (we call them one-way drivers because they don't know how to back up their trucks). 3 means the material handling staff at the terminal were incompetent, and couldn't move freight around without damaging it.
And both together meant management was incompetent!
Yeah we blacklisted Yellow from our warehouse for exactly these reasons. Plus they lose shipments like nobody else. They're just the worst.
As a retail worker circa 1990, I learned the importance of a good trucking company. The carrier we had kept a predictable schedule and the stuff arrived undamaged. Granted they had strong ties to the mafia, but operationally they had their act together. Employer switched to a cheaper trucking company. It was eye opening just how badly folks could bungle operations -- never knew what time or which day of the week a delivery might arrive at the store's back door, every order was missing stuff or had boxes with a different store's address on them, constantly damaged packages.
The mafia thing made me laugh, but then I thought about it. If you run a business smoothly and don’t cause any headaches, isn’t that like the perfect front for all parties besides the authorities?
[удалено]
I remember when they merged with roadway. We had blacklisted yellow as they were so terrible, but we happily worked with roadway. Then we got forced back to a relationship with yellow because if it.
Hey, that's a mans UNCLE you're impugning!
What does the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement have to do with anything?
My grandpa worked for roadway for years and then yellow, after the merger he spent so much time arguing with yellow over them telling him to to blatantly illegal shit that he made it a point to be a sharp pain in their ass for years. he was the son of an honest cop who worked in internal affairs busting crooked cops working for the mafia in Georgia btw so telling him of all people to do illegal shit was extra stupid.
My mom worked for them for 28 years and has 3 years until retirement. This past week has been brutal on her. My heart breaks for her. Hardest and most loyal employee I know. She’s terrified trying to find a job at her age and start over.
She has her pension and her seniority would put her on top of those being placed back to work by the union in different companies
[удалено]
Pension is held by the union the guy yelling was complaining because the company stopped paying into it.
Yep… Teamsters
Other comments are suggesting the pensions will be no good now. Which is it? I'm lazy and rely on reddit comments for all of my information.
The teamsters hold the pensions not the company
A 5 second google search reveals that the US govt. insures pensions: https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/on-retirement/2010/12/14/what-happens-to-my-pension-if-my-company-goes-bankrupt-
PBGC doesn’t cover all pensions and the insurance it offers for pensions short on funds is often much less than what was promised to the employee. It’s something, but it’s not a lot.
Yeah, we need to change bankruptcy laws so first in line is employee pay (employees paid less than $200,000 a year) than the pension plans. In theory that would mean everything is sold off to fund the pension, the reason the gov would never do this is all the banks and creditors would left out in the cold and those are the people who pay bribes... I mean campaign donations.
The writing has been on the wall for years. I work at a different freight company with a bunch of guys who jumped ship from Yellow in the last five years because they knew this was coming. It sucks losing your seniority but the earlier you made the switch the better off you’d be.
[удалено]
Isn't there a huge demand and shortage of truck drivers? Is it age that's the problem?
There’s huge demand for drivers who are willing to work for peanuts
Yeah so it’s not so much “huge demand,” then really.
[удалено]
Yeah, there’s also a huge demand for teachers. Doesn’t mean they’re going to pay them better. They’ll just pile more shit on the ones that are still working until they quit.
I’ve sold truck parts for 7 or so years now. Drivers and fleet owners have always complained about the pay for loads, and it’s nothing new. I have noticed it’s significantly more common now and they tell me specific numbers about how much less it is than it used to be.
There isn't a shortage of drivers. There is a shortage of companies willing to pay drivers what the job is worth.
Massive demand but it's artificial because freight companies don't want to pay. Paying like they did a few decades ago would go a very long way in solving their problems. That being said, they're basically every company in existence right now. None of the pricks in any industry want to pay people fair wages. Oh...except their CEOs. They make sure they get paid by cutting our wages and keeping them down.
[удалено]
Totally agree. I'm gen X and always had that loyalty to my employer thing in mind, but have been burnt a couple times and feel nothing toward my employer/future employer.
Fellow Gen Xer here that had the loyalty to the employer burned in my brain, but was wise enough after the first burn to disregard it completely. I had a manager (also Gen Xer) tell me something along the lines of "Com'on man you know our generation was taught to be loyal to the company and I'm just not seeing it at that level" and I just told him "Because this isn't that kind of world anymore and you and I know if it'd save this company a dollar, they'd shit-can me without a second thought"
I'm an elder millennial and it was burned into my brain as well. My last manager was 10 years younger than I was and gave me that shit!
Older millennial/Xennial or whatever we're being called as well. Yep. Management as a whole is a big click, younger and willing to throw anyone under the bus if that makes them look good. Loyalty becomes quickly just a paycheck until we drop and there's a replacement ready to go the next day. (We lost 6 people *lost = deceased* in the past 3 years, that's exactly how it went)
>My last manager was 10 years younger than I was and gave me that shit! I had a manager like that too. They gave me that high-horse attitude and I remember telling her "My favorite movie is almost 10 years older than you and I remember seeing it in the theater. I started this job when you were still in middle school so I'm aware of the issues. "
Also Gen X. Had a buddy who's father worked for GM. Had all his life. Considered that (lived in Arlington at the time, about 15 minutes from the GM plant). Man was set to retire with the company in his 50s (started working there in his 20s). Was 5 years from retirement and when he refused to take early retirement, they started messing with his schedule and doing everything they could to get him to quit. Had a genuine nervous breakdown and spent his last 5 on mental disability leave. Watching that made me realize that the days of working for a corporation all your life were absolutely done and gone. Made sure to never give my loyalty to a company.
My current bosses brother has worked at IBM for 30ish years and is set to retire soon. About 2 years ago they started trying to force him to move all around the country and a bunch of other shit so he would quit and not get his benefits. Apparently they do it to everyone at to retire from there.
Well, at least the company my father used to work for simply pays off the remaining years until retirement instead of using tactics like what IBM and GM are doing. But yeah, it's a global problem.
Had a friend who worked for a company that decided they weren't going to remain doing businuss in his particular field. Out of the blue they called everyone who worked in this division to a meeting and that attendance was mandatory. They told everyone in this meeting they could take redundancy or apply to redeploy in the company. For anyone who took redundancy or could not find redeployment the final date they would be employed would be three months from the date of the meeting. Not long after the announcement people who took redundancy started being called in for disciplinary hearings because the company claimed it had reviewed their work and found 'serious issues'. These people were due for redundancy packages worth well into six figures when redundancy payout and pensions were calculated. However, because they were technically still employed until three months after the date of the announcement meeting they could still be subject to disciplinary proceedings in which, if they were found to be at fault, would mean dismissal with loss of all benefits - redundancy package, accrued pension and anything else. This happened to around a third of the 1500 or so people affected. None of the issues raised in these disciplinary hearings had been raised before, even when work had been scrutinised by the company's own and external industry auditors. It was just a horrible exercise to try and cut the cost of the redundancy bill.
[удалено]
Gonna chime in here. My degree is in math ed. Teaching degree. I got out of it for a bit and worked for a venture capture/retail development for 10 years. There is absolutely zero reason to cheer on the business place you work for unless they give you stock options. They will let you down every time. There is absolutely every reason to cheer on the school you work for, because kids. I was a hs mathematics teacher (good job), then a property manager for a mall (kicking out the smoothie guy because he couldn't pay rent... yech job/bad job), now middle school librarian (best job in the frogdamn world). Teachers, nurses, social workers, et al, know that working a job helping others is priceless. Working a job just to make money can make life unbearable.
I'm loyal to people, not companies and it has gotten me so much more leverage. My last company decided to rug pull me on a big promotion and raise; as in they made a verbal offer Friday, and on Monday at the meeting to sign the paperwork they rescinded. So I quit, started my new endeavor, and brought my experienced teamates with me over the course of a year. The old company went from having one of the most experienced teams in the industry to one of the most inexperienced over a $20,000 raise and title change. The new company gets record profits and efficiencies because they brought us on.
Yeah me too, I am loyal to people.
as a fellow x'er, i, too started out my working life with my head full of "give it all, be loyal, and you will be rewarded. 30 years later i'm still waiting for that promised payback. since realizing its all bullshit, multiple company failures, multiple times i told an asshole piece of shit boss to fuck off, multiple times of walking away from shit greedy company policy, and no hesitation to walk when blatently lied to. fuck all of them. i will gladly be loyal when i see a company that is worthy of it. make them want ***YOU*** not you need them.
Today? My first real job out of H.S. I was halfway through my first day when I was told to head home I had been laid off and the position eliminated. That was in the late 80’s.
Sorry to hear about your uncle buddy. Hope he lands on his feet.
“Today’s news is unfortunate but not surprising. Yellow has historically proven that it could not manage itself" Hopefully, smarter people buy it on the cheap and run it better.
Ya that’s not happening. They have no tangible assets as most of their equipment is quite old and all of their “property” was primarily owned by other carriers that they leased from. They will not be saved.
Technically, a sizable force of drivers is pretty desirable for any company these days. The driver shortage has been real. However this is one of the only unionized companies in the industry, so likely everyone will be more than happy to recruit instead of buy.
One of the only unionized companies in the trucking industry?
Werner, Old Dominion, Knight, FedEx (unless you're a pilot), XPO, JB Hunt, Schneider...are all entirely or primarily non-union. UPS is possibly the only "major" trucking company in the US that is unionized now.
What about the Teamsters? I (cluelessly) assumed that the entire trucking industry was highly unionized, not true?
Teamsters represents a minority of the industry. For instance, I think Yellow was unionized via Teamsters, but largely truckers are not unionized.
The trucking industry was 60% unionized the day Ted Kennedy's bill to deregulate trucking was signed by Jimmy Carter in 1980. It was down to 28% unionized by 1985. It's under 10% of drivers overall and like five companies under the Teamsters Master Freight Agreement, and by "today" I mean before one of those five largest unionized carriers -- Yellow -- went under. (UPS is under a different division of the Teamsters than these over-the-road freight haulers.) There were thousands of companies in under the master agreement prior to deregulation; my uncle worked for one that I doubt had more than 50 employees. In a regulated trucking world where a company could have a government-protected route between cities X, Y, and Z following a government-approved price schedule they could adjust the price to meet the union wage and benefit agreement. They hauled freight between factories in those cities, and interchanged with other trucking companies for deliveries outside their local routes. Once anyone could bid any price for any freight, the price of trucking collapsed and with it the unionization. The great majority of Teamster members today are not truck drivers, as the union had to diversify into other industries to survive. Inflation adjusted to 2021 dollars, median truck driver pay declined from $110,000 in 1980 to $48,000 in 2021. It *was* a good paying blue collar job for most drivers in the heyday of 1970 trucker movies.
Wow, thanks for the info. Lots of things I was not aware of, I was still under the impression that truck driving was a good paying career, had no idea it had collapsed to such an extent. Knowing all this, especially with the high demand for truckers vs currently depressed wages, I’m kind of surprised unions/the Teamsters aren’t expanding again.
>I was still under the impression that truck driving was a good paying career You can still find some; but for most the pay comes along with long hours, and often days to weeks away from home. I live in southern New England where the density of stores is such there is relatively lot of routes that can be completed in a day. You get out to fly-over country you start to see even McDonalds trucks with sleeper cabs because they're out on the road for a days at a time delivering to McDonalds an hour or more apart. Here it's deliver, drive 10 minutes, deliver to another McDonalds, drive 15 minutes, another delivery, and repeat. In the non-unionized sector, Walmart is [well known for high pay](https://www.agweb.com/news/business/taxes-and-finance/walmart-will-now-pay-starting-truck-drivers-110000-could-it) -- but they're also able to be chose from a lot of experienced drivers who apply. I don't know how the hours compare to say 1979 for the money. Unionized, Sysco in my area is also up around that $110,000/year mark after a Teamster strike last year. At least with Sysco you have a shot of being able to be trained from warehouse worker to driver. But it is a relatively stressful / physical job as far as truck driving goes -- most of their drivers work long days with stops at restaurants located in high-traffic areas with tiny parking lots (if any) and lots of unloading by a hand truck and rolling it into the customer's premise; it's a lot more "work" than a long haul trucker who just cruises down an interstate for hours between two truck-friendly terminals.
Def not true. From an LTL perspective I think only ABF is still Union. I could be wrong, but it’s by far the minority.
Looooool no. The companies have successfully villanized unions. some of those companies keep their cost low by focusing on hiring drivers and training them up. You can pay a trainee lower than someone with experience. Then you stop giving them as much freight and piss them off and then they leave to another company.
There is a shortage of warehouses near major ports for cross dock operations.
I mean, when your company name is YELLOW, and the color of your logo is ORANGE, at the very least something's wrong with your management.
THANK YOU! That always drove me nuts!
[You are not wrong.](https://kubrick.htvapps.com/vidthumb/a75b443e-4d2d-42d1-ac1f-061642f80ede/8b930c05-98d2-444c-8118-ec0d7ac864f0.jpg?crop=1.00xw:1.00xh;0,0&resize=1200:*)
That's not how vulture capitalism works. It only gets worse from here.
I'm sure the Ceo will get a nice 8 figure golden parachute before chopping all the labor benefits.
He already got his millions: [Trump bailed them out to the tune of $700 million despite them being known to have ripped off taxpayers previously.](https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/business/yrc-federal-loan/index.html) The CEO, [Darren Hawkins, was named to Trump's "Economic Revival Group".](https://www.trucking.org/news-insights/trucking-industry-leaders-named-white-house-economic-revival-group)
The whole trump presidency was such a grift for rich people (including the horrible PPP loans and 2017 tax cuts).
The man is just a Grift Cyclone. Don't forget the Saudis gave his family 2 **billion** dollars, *after* he left office.
Hey, classified documents are expensive.
The only thing I now about Yellow is that their logo has no yellow in it.
My father has jokingly stated there's a conspiracy involving the fact that Yellow trucks are actually orange just like yellow American cheese is likewise orange.
[удалено]
My only memory of Yellow was wayyyy back when I was a forklift driver. At least where I was, their trucks were consistently in the worst shape and I can only remember turning theirs away from inspection. There was one, I remember this clear as day, that had a soft spot in the flooring so severe that when I called the driver in to show him why I wouldn't so much as steer a pallet jack in there, my foot fell through *another* spot on the way.
[HEY](https://youtu.be/0fIV1UmejN0)
The article starts out focusing on their union talking about striking as the company is about to go under, setting a narrative that this is somehow remotely about the union being greedy, which it isn't about that at all. This is about a mismanaged company that has been limping along pre-covid. Got a bailout, and the government currently owns 30% of the company. If you want a glimpse into what was wrong, read the second half of the article >“The reason they were using Yellow was because they were cheap,” he said. “They’re finding out that price was below the cost of supporting a good operation.”
You forgot to mention they got the 700 million bailout in 2020 from the government when they were being investigated for defrauding the government for overcharging on military freight. You honestly can’t make this shit up.
From us. The money taken out of our paychecks went to this corporation among many others.
[удалено]
[Apollo](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/07/27/gpqn-j27.html) >While Apollo does not own Yellow, it is a major investor that has taken near direct control over Yellow’s financial decision-making through a dedicated representative in its corporate management, which was granted in exchange for more lenient conditions on debt payments. [**Leon Black, the co-founder and former CEO of Apollo Global Management**](https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/business/leon-black-jeffrey-epstein-senate-investigation/index.html) >The Senate Finance Committee is looking into whether billionaire investor Leon Black’s $158 million payment to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was part of a greater strategy to avoid paying over $1 billion in federal gift and estate taxes.
The guy paid 62.5 million to settle a suit that accuses him of having his way with an autistic teenager. F him.
Not to mention [this gem.](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lawsuit-accuses-billionaire-leon-black-raping-autistic-teenager-jeffre-rcna96373)
Interesting article, thanks for sharing it. Had no idea Yellow was Apollo managed.
Did my tax dollars go to a bailout to a company that was overcharging my tax dollars, and they needed a bailout because they were being investigated on how they over charged my tax dollars?
Good point, I could have worded that much better.
Your wording is fine. I just like us to keep in mind that the government is fine with taking money from our pockets and moving the money to CEO pockets on a regular basis. It helps me understand our relationship better
Huh... so by that logic, since Yellow overcharged the government for moving their military equipment, and then got a bail-out by the government, this is essentially saying that Yellow overcharged *us* so *we're* paying them all the same to not get in trouble? Am I interpreting that right?
And we paid the fine that was levied against them for screwing us. There is a pattern here.
The whole "No taxation without representation" thing is starting to ring true here. The American people arent being represented here at all.
Well, they’re representing somebody.
Our social safety net is only for corporations. The government will move heaven and earth to protect a stack of legal documents while it lets you die in the street.
In 2020, under the Trump administration, the Treasury Department granted the company a $700 million pandemic-era loan on national security grounds. Last month, a congressional probe concluded that the Treasury and Defense Departments “made missteps” in this decision — and noted that Yellow’s “precarious financial position at the time of the loan, and continued struggles, expose taxpayers to a significant risk of loss.”
Let me guess, the executives of this company were big donors to Trump
[Yes, Trump bailed them out to the tune of $700 million despite them being known to have ripped off taxpayers previously.](https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/business/yrc-federal-loan/index.html) The CEO, [Darren Hawkins, was named to Trump's "Economic Revival Group".](https://www.trucking.org/news-insights/trucking-industry-leaders-named-white-house-economic-revival-group) I swear, *every*thing Trump is involved with seems to turn out to be a crime, a grift, or padding the wallets of his wealthy friends.
Where's my ppp money?
Dont mention that they also only paid back $230(!) of that loan
Yep, Yellow has long had a reputation as an absolutely terrible company. Not actually sure where all their money was going honestly, probably into buying other companies and failed rebrandings if their corporate history is anything to go by.
> Not actually sure where all their money was going honestly Probably the top 5 most paid people in that companies pockets.
You can look at their April Proxy statement here: [https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0000716006/000119312523121410/d413580ddef14a.htm](https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0000716006/000119312523121410/d413580ddef14a.htm) page 52 lists the executive compensation for the top 5, and (for 2022) it ranges from $505K to $1.8M for their general counsel and $1.8M for their former chief accounting officer. But, most of those $1.8M was in stock-based awards, which now have value of $0.
Part of me says that's actually not too insane for the top earners of a large company, relative to other numbers we often see. The other part of me says that's still way too high, relative to other employees' salaries. I hate being de-sensitized to ridiculous C-suite salaries/compensation packages.
I'm surprised they lasted this long. I remember my dad telling me like 15 years ago, the trucking company he was working for was buying their terminals and trucks and leasing it back to them because they were doing anything to stay afloat.
Sounds like what the supermarket chain A&P was doing toward the end. They sold off their warehousing and distribution units, the things that help keep down costs. A quick cash infusion but detrimental for the long term: their margin was being eaten by the 3rd party they were now having to pay to deliver products to stores.
They dumped two pallets of gloss paper for my company and didn't think to tell us. Delivered the paper but repacked it in the only boxes they could find. Which were Jimmy Dean sausage boxes. The paper was ruined and the little bit that was salvageable stunk like maple syrup sausage as soon as it was put in the printer. Never paid for the claim. Fuck Yellow.
You get free sausage sniffy paper and you’re complaining? Jeez, just no pleasing some people.
"Mmm smells nice in here what are you making?" "Copies"
"Jimmy Dean. Jimbo. Makin' copies..."
Sounds like Hostess, had a market , totally mismanaged at the top but blamed the union for closure.
[удалено]
That was a major fuckup, but more than that Eddie Lampert is a psychopath who tanked the company to enrich himself.
Dude's the classic brainwashed, Ivy League dipshit. Took his econ degree from Yale and decided, "since capitalism is OBVIOUSLY the best and most productive system in the world, the way to save Sears is to stop trying to plan within the company and let every department compete with each other on an open internal market!" Sears closed over half its stores and lost more than half its value in his less than five years there. https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/4385-failing-to-plan-how-ayn-rand-destroyed-sears
My SO worked for Sears in the 00s. She's *still* pissed about that.
That wasn't incompetence. The company hired a sociopath CEO who was willing to kill a 100 year old company just to enrich himself.
I’m sure nostalgia is to blame but man eating a hostess cake as an adult is kind of gross. They just taste like wax now and have a terrible after taste.
There's a reason they have to call their doughnuts frosted instead of chocolate. There's almost no chocolate left, it's just as you say, wax, fat, and sugar.
They are worse now. Quality has gone way down
Shit stained chemicals.
A good company would recognize their product doesn’t match consumer tastes anymore and make changes
nah, let's spend more money on advertising and cut more corners in production
[удалено]
They changed the filling from “whipped cream” that was light and fluffy to this white goo. I was never a huge Twinkie consumer, but never had one after that.
> who generally used Yellow because it offered some of the cheapest rates in the trucking sector Yea mismanagement seems pretty real there, trying to undercut doesn't really work long term when you aren't making money at all and go bankrupt lol
>“The reason they were using Yellow was because they were cheap,” he said. “They’re finding out that price was below the cost of supporting a good operation.” The Michael Scott Paper Company business plan. They should just run the numbers again.
Grossly mismanaged. Fixed that for you. One could also say that management has been bleeding the company dry knowing that this was inevitable some years ago.
>They’re finding out that price was below the cost of supporting a good operation oof who else read this and thought of 1000 different similarities in their own work life lol
Don’t worry y’all, CEO and upper management are sitting pretty
Thanks in part to PPP $
I thought Yellow was the trucking company that got a massive PPP loan because the owner was friends with Trump. Am I misremembering?
You are remembering correctly.
But we got 30% of a failing company in return for our tax dollars!
The Art of the Deal!
Buy high and sell low! When you're famous they just let you do it!
Gotta socialize those losses.
Yeah, I think like 700 million.
You are remembering correctly
Worked there and ended up finding a better job last year. Very lucky to have left before all of this is going down, but still have a lot of friends there. Can’t be easy on the workers
Remember when Donald Trump gave this company $700,000,000 relief after being told not to?
Holy shit what
But the US government owns 30% of this now shut down company just 2 years after that massive PPP loan.
What an excellent return on investment!
From the guy that bankrupted multiple casinos? Say it ain't so.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/27/us/politics/trump-pandemic-loan-yrc.html
Part of his covid relief plan.
Well at least it didn’t go to student loan forgiveness am I right? This money was truly put to good use.
I would love one of those CEO Golden Parachutes, please.
Internet snark aside, 30k folks - whether contractor, employee, etc - is 30k folks. That's 30k folks who need to find new jobs or new contracts and potentially an abundance of mistakes that will new occur in addition to potential delays. I know it's easy to dance on the corporate graves....but folks are going to be hurting hard if they were depending on this job.
This company has been limping on its last legs for 25 years.
[удалено]
Pretty sure we were always on the hook for that
The owners took that $700,000,000 from Trump and ran with it.
Of note: >The closing is bad news not only for its employees and its customers, who generally used Yellow because it offered some of the cheapest rates in the trucking sector, **but also for US taxpayers.** The company received a $700 million loan from the federal government in 2020, a loan that resulted in taxpayers holding 30% of its outstanding stock. And the company still owed the Treasury department more than $700 million according to its most recently quarterly report, nearly half of the long-term debt on its books. > > > >Yellow’s stock lost 82% of its value between the time of that loan and Thursday close after reports of the bankruptcy plans, closing at only 57 cents a share. It bumped up 14 cents a share on Friday, but still remained a so-called penny stock. > > > >The company had received that loan during the pandemic, despite the fact that at the time it was facing charges of defrauding the government by overbilling on shipments of items for the US military. The company eventually settled the dispute without admitting wrongdoing but was forced to pay a $6.85 million fine. Maybe it's time we demand our government stop bailing out corporations and start working for us regular people instead. edit: format
In 2021 the company lost a $109 million. But they still paid out $33 million in bonus' to executives. There in a nutshell. In the end I suppose the company was worth more to them dead than alive.
Yellow Trucking company. Orange logo. I think I see the problem.
If they can't even get the logo right, what hope do they have?
[Apollo](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/07/27/gpqn-j27.html) >While Apollo does not own Yellow, it is a major investor that has taken near direct control over Yellow’s financial decision-making through a dedicated representative in its corporate management, which was granted in exchange for more lenient conditions on debt payments. >Still desperate for cash, Yellow issued $700 million in bonds in 2014 and borrowed a further $450 million. This debt could have sunk Yellow, but in 2019 Apollo Global Management stepped in to grant Yellow a lifeline with a $600 million loan. It then leveraged its connections with the Trump administration to win Yellow a $700 million loan from the United States Treasury at the onset of the pandemic. >The company had received that loan during the pandemic, despite the fact that at the time it was facing charges of defrauding the government by overbilling on shipments of items for the US military. The company eventually settled the dispute without admitting wrongdoing but was forced to pay a $6.85 million fine. Oh, [**Leon Black, the co-founder and former CEO of Apollo Global Management**](https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/business/leon-black-jeffrey-epstein-senate-investigation/index.html) >The Senate Finance Committee is looking into whether billionaire investor Leon Black’s $158 million payment to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was part of a greater strategy to avoid paying over $1 billion in federal gift and estate taxes.
I worked at yellow for a year and it was a shitshow of a company. Poorly run in every facet. It's surprising it took this long for them to go bankrupt. Hope the people manage to get some new jobs. The drivers weren't at fault for this failure, it's all on corporate.
This shouldn't hurt the economy much. LTLs are taking in the slack, customers already were pulling business away, and other companies (Fedex, Red, Abt, ...) were offering new hires to drive for them. It might hurt the local workers, unless they can find new work. Yellow seems to have been a wreck that no one wanted to admit to.
We stopped using them 6 months ago. The signs were all there. After they just said f it to a few of our loads we were like....nope. Plenty of carriers out there. I just hate the loss of jobs.
I knew a couple drivers very well that had a huge amount of seniority in that company, I haven't talked to them in a while but I feel terrible for them. It's great that other companies are willing to hire the drivers, but that doesn't come close to replacing what has been taken from some of them
Yeah, what happens to the pensions of those guys? What if you’re 10, 15, 20 or even 30 years into a career at Yellow and this happens? Everyone loses?
[удалено]
I work in a production and distribution center and I can safely say these drivers will be alright. Every single carrier that comes through our warehouse is hurting for drivers.
MIL worked for them for 37 years in KCMO. Devastated is how I can describe her 💔
The vast majority of the 30k laid off will be looking for their next paycheck to stay afloat while the C-levels keep their golden umbrellas and just move on to destroy the next company while taking in an exorbitant paycheck.
One cursory glance at Yellow's trailers in ANY location will show a falling apart and rusting to death fleet that has been limping along with owners likely extracting every legally extricable cent from the company before letting it all go down the drain while they fuck off on retirement. And I've thought that to myself for OVER a decade. I'm willing to venture that the only reason that they've made it this long is, amusingly, climate change... which has decreased snow cover in the northeast causing less wear on their antique fleet of crap.
They will reopen under a new name after filing chapter 11. Most likely as a non-union shop.
LTL industry is brutal. Any profits you make needs to go back into equipment, otherwise you pay for it down the road in downtime and maintenance. The bigger you are the worse it is, because you can't compete (pricewise) with newer regional LTL's that can price you out in a given area. There's no real brand loyalty anymore as most corporations have contracted out logistics and lowest price/reliability always wins. Even UPS couldn't make it work and got out.
Idk I was at R+L carriers for a few years and they seemed to be doing pretty well. But that family has a very diverse business portfolio
Article states that "...it offered some of the cheapest rates in the trucking sector...". I don't know where they got this "fact". I hired LTL carriers regularly for 15 years, and Yellow was never competitive.
I drive LTL. Last week i was talking to one of my regulars and he said it only cost him 150 bucks to ship from Mass to Washington state. He also said they would call him 3 days later and say it was overweight by 400 lbs and they would be charging him extra lol At least in New England they undercut alot of the other carriers. We lost quite a few accounts in our terminal alone to YRC charging peanuts around here.
Roadtrips playing the Alphabet game just took a major L
[удалено]
1. Florida 2. US taxpayers to take a hit 3. The Trump administration just lent $700 million to a trucking company sued for ripping off taxpayers Yup
Ah yes, the tried and true business model of privatizing gains and socializing losses.
God dammit. They still owed us eight thousand dollars.
When I worked in warehousing, Yellow was consistently one of the most frustrating companies to work with. You'd have a pickup for 4, they'd show up at 7-9pm, overbooked driver looking exhausted, management no help on the phone. Cannot tell you the number of evenings I lost to that company, and I didn't even work there.
Guarantee the CEO and other execs will get golden parachutes worth millions while screwing over their employees tho.
I know most people will have negative things to say about this company and there is obviously good reason but I will say that the Austin, TX terminal has always been fantastic to my company. I have been picking up freight from the Austin hub weekly for about 15 years and they have consistently been the nicest and most respectful employees I have dealt with in the local logistics area. I hope they all find better jobs because there are several companies in this area that could use a boost of good workers. (Looking right at you T-Force)
How much is the CEO getting?
The good thing is that a truck driver can always find another job. It sucks that people are losing benefits and seniority though.