Less-than-truckload carrier Yellow Corp. filed revised change-of-operations notifications with the Teamsters union on Monday. An original plan to consolidate operations at regional carriers New Penn and Holland with its national YRC Freight network received pushback from the union in December, forcing the carrier to revisit the process.
A key sticking point in the original notification was the creation of 998 utility positions, requiring drivers to work across the different operating companies and handle freight on the docks. The latest submission shows a provision for only 121 such positions originating from 39 terminals.
Yellow (NASDAQ: YELL) also wants to refine linehaul movements to include more turns in the system where drivers relay freight to other drivers, or to other terminals, returning home at night. A “designated terminal turn” would have a driver haul freight to a terminal, work on the dock there and return to their origin facility at the end of the shift.
The documents showed there would be a total of 36 designated terminals.
“Increasing the number of ‘turns’ is a quality-of-life issue for many of our drivers who will now be able to make it home at night,” a Yellow spokesperson told FreightWaves. “In addition, this change will add consistency to our drivers’ schedules and enable Yellow to provide enhanced on-time service.”
Union workers, however, don’t want to rebid for jobs or be tasked with dock operations, which they view as outside of their job description as a driver.
In the notifications, Yellow said it wants to utilize this procedure on 20% to 25% of linehaul operations in the East, Central and South regions and that 395 of its road drivers at Holland are currently performing this type of work.
“The result of this proposed change will create additional road turns, meet [and] turns and will increase the speed, velocity and consistency of freight moving between our designated terminals as well as our end of line terminals,” a document read.
Yellow also seeks to realign the ZIP codes covered by 204 terminals to optimize pickup and delivery by creating shorter routes and improving efficiency and capacity.
“The optimized terminal ZIP code coverage will streamline our city pickup and delivery,” the form stated. “Translating to earlier pickups and deliveries, improved response time and increased capacity to handle our customer’s shipping needs.”
Yellow requested a hearing date for the week of March 10 with implementation of the plan no later than April 30.
“YRC Freight, New Penn and Holland must change in order to become competitive in the marketplace,” the document continued. “Significantly improving our transit times is imperative to our success.”
Yellow has already engaged in the process of merging all of the different operating companies onto the same technology platform in efforts to reduce costs and eliminate redundancy. The company executed the first phase of the overhaul last year, which included the restructuring of 89 YRC Freight and Reddaway facilities in the West.
Management from Yellow has said in the past that a total of 28 terminals, or 6% of doors, would be closed in the process.
Yellow is a unionized carrier and party to the National Master Freight Agreement, which governs union-employer relations and requires the filing of changes to operations.
“As part of this change, we are modernizing the business — integrating our networks, optimizing our footprints, aligning our operations and expanding our regional capabilities (Super Regional) to better serve our customers and redefine our value proposition in the LTL marketplace,” Yellow said.
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David Banach
The company is trying to run streamline hurting moral and making people that have been there 15 plus years not care who wants to work for that type of company u feel like just don’t care
Gary L Dunfield
They are closing 28 of our doors. That seems WOW!!! They are already paying us under scale. Sounds like they want us to do more for less. Where is our incentive? Why are they changing our contract and why is the Union allowing this. Don’t our leaders have any balls against this. We’re not getting anything out of this except more work and being bullied!!!
John Kelder
Yellow has tried it before . Utility worker , combo worker and other titles all failed miserably. Drivers don’t want to handle freight. ” no touch freight ” is an incentive other companies use to hire drivers . Not Yellow . Just another way to eliminate job classifications . And that’s what they want in the end . A labor pool totally subjected to the whims of management , without regard to workers needs and customer demands .
Donald Cunat
Roadway employees dont like Yellow. Yellow employees dont like Roadway. Holland employees dont like either. This is hardly a culture geared for success . From my Yellow system terminal’s perspective “MA” likes Holland best. We got all the worst hand me downs from Holland. Executives got their bonuses inspite of underperforming. Where did 700 million go. The city fleet is tired and frankly ugly as your corporate face. My prediction is there will ultimately be one corporate survivor ,Holland.
Trucker Bill
The company wants road drivers to perform work that traditionally was not in their standard duty.
This is because Road Drivers are the companies highest producers.
They are not hourly, they’re paid on performance.
31 yr employee, and I’ve heard many, many times over the years that ” linehaul ” is our biggest expense.
True, BUT, they are the greatest producers.
FACT.
Juan Lecea Castillo
Im an original Roadway Driver and yes when Yellow took over, things took a turn for the worse! Ive spent time on Holland Docks and Reddaway Docks while traveling for the company to implement the phases and I will say this: Holland And Reddaway systems outshine that of YELLOW! Now they are ruined just like they Ruined Roadway!
Curtis FormyDuval
It’s just a matter of time before Yellow goes belly up and closes its doors for good.
George Perpard
Drivers are going to take a cut in pay. Also the the utility drivers were suppose to deliver freight. That is what the company first went to the union about. To take freight to start moving pick a trailer further out and then bring it home to deliver. A complete driver city delivery with overtime. This coming in where you have hired dock employees to have them set t home while drivers come in do there work. Then drive to a terminal to have a dock worker there swing freight to several trailers is still an extra step in holding up freight. The union showed were there hold ups occured and the company refused (REFUSES)!to fix there problems and the biggest is no trucks. So who is going to jail from YRC for not boosting there fleet with the money the government gave them.