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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Trucker T
Sadly, most of us have lost faith in the senior management to do much of anything correctly. They refuse to pay heed to the people who actually do the work (and are very well informed into what works best); they order their subordinates (the frontline managers and supervisors) to do stupid stuff that those people know is wrong, or they don’t know what to do at all. Some of us work VERY hard trying to do the right thing, retain customers, attract new ones, and “take care of business”. We get stymied entirely too often.
15 years ago, we were the biggest game in town. The corporate yea-hoos made such a mess in 2009 that we’ve never recovered from. FedEx has eaten our lunch, and our dinner too. They have grown gigantic on our backs with our former customers. Now they, not us, enjoy the economies of scale that come with being the largest. It will be a miracle for us to ever achieve that spot again. Thanks Bill Zollars for ruining us. Thanks, James Welch for trying to “right the ship”. Thanks, Darren Hawkins for trying to “right the ship” after the ship is 80% submerged beneath the waves. I really don’t think you can shift the culture of this company quickly enough, mostly because you won’t allow that to happen anyway. When we were Yellow (the original Yellow, not this bastardized replica), we had a motto of “yes We Can. Now that motto is “We could, but we won’t, because we might have to admit that we’re wrong, and our rank-and-file employees are right”.
James Calhoun
So drivers will be required to drive 4-5 hours then work on the dock for 4 hours and then drive another 4-5 hours to the home terminal. So a 14 hour day plus their commute and then do it again 10 hours later. So somehow a 16 hour day, every day, is better quality of life? There’s going to be a lot of injuries on the dock, since the drivers never had to do that before. Freight is going to be loaded wrong, put on the wrong trailers, damaged by forklifts. What a stupid idea.
Kc Dave.
Retired Teamster , Old School ” Roadway Express “” Bloomington Ca.
Kc Dave.
Seen this coming, Stand up. Don’t take Yellow’s BS . TEAMSTERS need to Strike. Don’t Back Down. !!!
Joseph B Medrano
What they are not telling is how many customers they lost by consuming Holland. Holland didn’t need yellow,but yellow needed Holland. Yellows new way is Holland’s way, but they have screwed it up. Yellow is succeeding in kill another one of the better companies. Rest is peace Holland(hmes)
Oscar
XPO does everything this article was talking about. The driver makes more money, and we still make it home at night. YRC is trying to catch up to the others. I work the dock before I run, if they need help or I need the extra cash I hit the dock again. Money to be made and you don’t have to be careless.
Rick
How about paying 100% back into the pension fund that you took away from the Teamsters years ago !!!
Big bakku
They closed the local terminal so now the drivers have to drive five times further to the new spot.. so that really don’t make sure they get home any earlier. Also all the places they closed everyone that was working on their trucks lost that work and job. They got rid of a lot of people with this move because of their own bad management from the higher-ups and they don’t care.