Surviving the Storm: My Battle at Yellow Freight (YRCW)

This is my opinion alone. This in no way represents the company or union’s thoughts or opinions. 

I started at Yellow Freight a little over 17 years ago in the St. Louis shop. Almost a year out of the Army, I was happy to land such a coveted union job. Back then, there were lines of people hoping to get a job at such a place. Competitive pay, great benefits, and union protection were a great way to go. I thought I had found a job to support my family for the long haul, one I could retire from with a decent pension. Not long after the 2-year climb to reach the top pay scale ($22.00 hr), the wheels started to come off that false dream. The rest of this I can’t tell you the way it happened with 100% accuracy and facts, but I can tell you the way I remeber it. 

Sometime around 2008, the rumors started to fly that William D. Zollars had overextended the company’s debt with his acquisitions of Roadway and Holland. With the looming “great recession,” YRCW was about to be in series trouble. The rumors were true, and the company asked its hard-working union members for a 10% concession on the newly approved contract. Being new and not knowing any better, I voted yes on that first 10% concession. Foolishly believing the company had everyone’s best interest at heart. It is possible that was the only way to save the company then, but we will never know. Shortly after that first round of concessions, the company asked for another round. This time they wanted an additional 5% and no pension payments for 18 months. I learned my lesson the first time and voted no moving forward. Not that it mattered; somehow, it passed again. Including somewhere there was the company only paying 25% of the pension payment. This has never recovered and has devastated many who could have retired. So there we were, a strong union company brought to our knees and the brink of bankruptcy by one overzealous CEO that clearly did not understand freight. 

Over the next many years, so much has happened that it is hard to keep track. I remember debt for equity swaps to help keep the debt under control. William Zollars got paid a substantial amount of money to leave the company. Every CEO or president of the company since then has also gotten huge sums of money to leave the company. Each time a new one came in, they had a new plan to save the company. So many changes of operations that would make the company better. Maybe some of them did make changes that helped; I don’t remember now. I remember them getting their going away presents in the form of millions in severance. Plenty of other performance-based pay (bonuses) was also paid to other executives. 

So that is how I remember the early years I spent with this giant company. Through most of those years, the union leadership gave the company everything they wanted. It did not matter what the membership wanted. Weak union leadership would be an understatement. It appeared to most of us through the years that the executives in charge were only interested in making their money but not the company’s long-term value. They had paid down some of the debt throughout the years, but not much. So each contract, the company claimed this was all they had, and the union accepted it. To recap, to bring us to today, economically, there were lost wages, pensions never regained, vacations lost, and countless jobs. Remember, before the Yellow Roadway merger, there were 55,000 employees. Now we are down to 22,000 union employees. 

We could get into the mismanagement, wasteful spending, and awful treatment of employees we have all seen, but why bother? Anyone that works at a company can find fault in the company. No matter the industry or company the employees are the in the best position to know what’s wrong and fix it. Like many other big companies, our executives are uninterested in our opinion. Since the day I started, it has always seemed similar to a fight. Unions against the company. Us against them. Both sides have had and maintain that attitude. I could spend 3 blogs discussing the internal problems with this company and its management instead of leadership attitude, but it comes down to two major problems. Trust and efficiency are killing us. 

No one in the company trusts each other. Supervisors don’t trust employees, and we don’t trust them. Even most of the management doesn’t appear to trust each other. The One Yellow motto is flawed to its core. We don’t even have One Yellow at individual terminals. Each department is only concerned with the numbers or goals they must reach to keep their job. Regardless of cost or reasoning, as long as they make their numbers. The top-down management that has been in place since I started has made that happen. Never taking the gloves off and allowing employees (union and management) to reach their top potential. To make this company succeed, someone has to get us all going in the same direction. Pick up and deliver freight should be it. Not all the numbers games. Those fictitious metrics used to measure employee performance must be evaluated and fixed. The current metrics only encourage poor decisions. We have to trust each other. If the company waits for the union to make the first move toward that trust, they should forget it. We made the first move through years of concessions and sacrifice. 

Efficiency is the second problem. I understand that the freight industry operates within pennies of profit per dollar. That can be tough to balance at a company of our size. Somewhere along the way, the focus got lost. Trying hard not to overstaff, fill each trailer to the max, cut costs on maintenance, and only pick up the good freight. Have you ever stopped and looked at the size of our network? It is an amazing network with so many hard-working, dedicated employees. Freight could fly through our system with ease. Just stop trying so hard to make every square inch of the trailer, every second of employee time, and every operation employees perform so efficient. The network is there if you allow it to operate. Less-than-a-truckload means we run the freight when we have to. Operate it the way they did for so many years successfully. Pick up and deliver the freight. That is it stop complicating it. We could be the number one freight company in the country. The efficiency will come from your employees doing what they can to be on time and safe. There is so much money wasted on trying to be so efficient than will ever be lost just doing the job. 

Now here we are again, a sinking ship. Yet another CEO with the answer to save us. That answer does nothing to fix the two issues I mentioned. The plan is to make employees work harder and longer for below-industry standards, decimate current contracts and supplements, and destroy the remaining employee morale. Yet again, it is on the union to save the company. The plan is also to attack the union as a problem. From what I remember of my business classes (MBA), it is the CEO’s job to secure the financing and get us what we need to be successful. Evidently, the plan negotiated with the lenders only works if contracts are broken. I was completely unaware that the company was so close to being broke until a couple of months ago. Then the push started hard to negotiate with the union at a time when the union is negotiating three huge contracts. You want to know why most members stand behind Sean M. O’Brien, because we finally have a voice. Someone who finally says enough is enough. He is not the big bad wolf. He is just a man trying to even the field from the past years of greed, incompetence, and sacrifice. 

I have a friend who had my back as an alternate when I was a steward. He said one of the most amazing things many years ago. “It is one thing to get fucked, it is a completely different thing to feel fucked.” Well, to whom it may concern, we FEEL fucked. None of the union members want this place to fail or lose our jobs, but we have given enough. You want to fix this thing. Get the financing in place without destroying contracts, regain the trust, and get us all going in the same direction. Do all of that without taking any more. 

In conclusion, my journey at Yellow Freight (YRCW) over the past 17 years has been a rollercoaster ride of hope, disappointment, and sacrifice. When I first joined fresh out of the Army, I believed I had secured a stable job with competitive pay, great benefits, and the protection of a union. However, as time went on, the company’s financial missteps and questionable management decisions became apparent. The burden of concessions fell on the hardworking union members, eroding our trust and leaving us feeling betrayed. Despite the challenges, I’ve witnessed a lack of cohesive direction and a culture of mistrust among employees and management alike. To turn things around, we need a leadership approach that fosters trust, values efficiency, and prioritizes the well-being of its employees. It is my hope that YRCW can rise above its current state, regain its financial stability, and create a work environment that inspires unity and success without further burdening its dedicated workforce.