September 1, 2011: YRC Worldwide Inc. is giving the members of its board of directors a raise. The Overland Park-based trucking company (Nasdaq: YRCW), which has been trying to recover from a recessionary brush with bankruptcy, said in a late Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it will pay its board members an annual cash retainer of $75,000, plus $10,000 a year extra for committee chairmen and $15,000 extra for the head...

August 25, 2011: U.S. trucking companies may face a 30 percent surge in wage bills by 2014 as rising demand for freight shipments threatens to push the industry’s driver shortage to the longest on record. The current shortfall will double in a year to about 300,000 full-time positions, or 10 percent of the workforce, said Noel Perry, managing director at consultant FTR Associates in Nashville, Indiana. A three-year deficiency would top the 300,000 vacancies lasting...

August 19, 2011: Our leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched. While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions...

August 12, 2011: The union that represents ramp workers at United Airlines won an election on Thursday to cover more than 14,000 workers as it combines with Continental. It's a big win for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which just gained more than 7,300 Continental workers from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Click here to read more at the Chicago Tribune.

August 10, 2011: The second quarter brought good news again for the US's four major public rail carriers, while Old Dominion again flew high among less-than-truckload carriers in a quarter that all improved their results if not exactly deliver outstanding results in some cases. As shown in the chart below, all four public rail carriers (Burlington Northern was acquired by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway in 2009) enjoyed strong results, and continued to enjoy relatively strong...

August 8, 2011: The new CEO of less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier YRC Worldwide Inc. said Friday he is focusing much of his early efforts on fixing the operating culture at the company's national LTL division, saying the network and the attitude supporting it "are not where we want it to be." In an Aug. 5 interview, James L. Welch said that "we still have work to do" at the division, known as YRC National. "We want...

August 3, 2011: Arkansas Best Corporation (NASDAQ:ABFS) climbed to a profit in the second quarter and beat Wall Street’s expectations in the process. Arkansas Best Corporation is a holding company through its subsidiaries is engaged in motor carrier transportation operations. Click here to read more.

August 3, 2011: As the International Brotherhood of Teamsters nominated three candidates for general president at last month’s convention, Sandy Pope’s acceptance speech was noteworthy on several levels. She was the first woman ever nominated to run for president of America’s most iconic union, a large, powerful — and highly macho — entity. But perhaps more remarkable was the language she used, bordering on contempt for a man — incumbent Jim Hoffa — who bears...

August 1, 2011: Sotheby’s auction house closed its doors Saturday to its 43 unionized art handlers, who are members of Teamsters Local 814. Click here to read more at Labor Notes.

August 1, 2011: Bill Zollars, the worst CEO in the history of LTL transportation has finally left the building but what he has left behind still lingers as an ongoing concern. Despite the town-hall meeting celebration that took place on Friday, YRCW really has nothing to celebrate. They are not out of the woods yet. Someday they will have to show a profit. Rumours for the past month internally and externally was that YRCW made...