New terminals at a major contractor of the U.S. Postal Service voted to unionize with the Teamsters union, according to a Thursday press release from the Teamsters.
10 Roads Express, the trucking company, employs more than 4,400 truck drivers, according to SAFER Web. Thirty-six drivers at 10 Roads Express voted to join the Teamsters last week, according to the union; the drivers are based in Carter Lake and Council Bluffs, Iowa, as well as Omaha, Nebraska.
More than 30 truck drivers at 10 Roads Express, all based in Kansas, voted to join the Teamsters in June, according to the union.
A Teamsters spokesperson said the union represents some 300 employees at 10 Roads Express. Around 200 of them joined the union in the past two years.
10 Roads Express did not respond to a FreightWaves request for comment. Reached by the CCJ, 10 Roads Express declined to comment on the Teamsters’ organizing efforts in the fleet or why drivers decided to unionize.
10 Roads Express was the second-largest contractor with the Postal Service in the 2022 fiscal year, according to a list of top Postal Service vendors from Culhane Meadows, a law firm that specializes in government contracting work. That year, the Postal Service awarded more than $700.4 million to 10 Roads Express.
Under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the Postal Service has diverted some of its over-the-road freight spending from its longtime trucking partners into the freight brokerage market, as FreightWaves reported in 2022. That pivot is expected to save the Postal Service cash, but it’s expected to squeeze carriers that have worked with the quasi-governmental agency for decades.
Large carriers like 10 Roads Express may be protected during this transition, as longtime parcel expert Satish Jindel told FreightWaves last year.
Meanwhile, trucking companies have seen drivers increasingly unionize this year amid a nationwide push for more labor organizing. Several dozen employees at a subsidiary of Werner, an Omaha-based trucking company, voted to unionize in August and September. Werner employs some 10,200 truck drivers.
Drivers at the Richmond, Virginia, terminal of Napa Transportation, a trucking company that employs nearly 400 drivers, voted to join the Teamsters in June.
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