YRC Seeks $1 Billion Federal Bailout

A personal Comment from an Employee's Wife:
My husband has worked for Yellow since CF went under. Yes, he is a union man, but at what price? I would like to share what being a truck driver for YRC is like. First of all, as a driver, my husband never knows when he is going to work. He has to be rested and available at the following times: 6-7 am, 12 to 1 noon, 6-7 pm and 12 to 1 am. He has to work 6 trips in order to get 56 hours off duty. His normal day is 14 hour workday. He has to work this overtime or we can't make ends meet. The whole industry needs to be reorganized. These poor drivers don't know when they will be working and thus aren't always rested. This makes it dangerous to themselves as well as fellow drivers. Their 70 hour work weeks are too much as well as 6 mandatory trips before they can take a few days off. These drivers are people, not machines.

Lastly, the hours are dangerous because one day they will drive during the day and the next day (as little as 10 off duty) they will be driving at night. Our bodies are not designed to do this!

We took a 10 percent pay cut in January 2009. This made us have to get rid of luxuries, like a regular phone and cable. We just can't afford these luxuries anymore. We kept our internet as this provides our phone and cable now. As long as it is free.

The company needs to look internally for it's poor spending habits. I hear of a lot of waste just from what my husband tells me. For example, if a driver finds something wrong with the truck he is driving, rather than take it to the mechanics station and get another truck, they pay the driver to sit with that truck while it gets fixed. This is wasteful.

Another wasteful decision is when they make the driver's sit at terminals and wait for someone to finally hook them up with a load. The hosslers are not in much of a hurry, and this wastes countless hours.

There are many points to make, but the bottom line is that YRC employs thousands of people and we need to keep this company alive, but the company needs to establish more humane operations as well as cut out the wastefulness! Remember, these employees are also tax payers that will not be paying into the system; but rather taxing our system with unemployement as well as other benefits if this company goes under.

RIDICULOUS!

What needs to happen is the same thing that almost sunk Continental Airlines - labor contracts are too restrictive and outdated. They need to tear up the existing contracts and come up with less restrictive work rules that promote labor and management unity, (the fight is outside their gates, not inside their gates). They could accomplish this and still pay a good livable wage with benefits. This is 2009 and in order to survive any company must be able to operate cost effectively. Management has a major role in their demise also. After Consolidated Freightways closed down, Yellow mistakenly hired too many of their former management personnel and these men proceeded to turned Yellow into another Consolidated Freightways. Yellow was a great company to work for, but they stopped taking care of who made them what they once was, which was their people. Taxpayer money should not be spent on companies who do not try to work cost effectively - it would be throwing taxpayer money away. This will be a great test for our liberal minded, tax and spend congress. What will another billion dollars thrown down the drain hurt. I say it is time to stop the money printing presses at the GAO and take on a survival of the fittest. RIP - YRC

Kingston, Why should a company that remains in business have to pay for the retirees of companies that were mismanaged and went out of business. It's not a great country when you are penalized when you stay in business.