September 15, 2011: A Teamster candidate challenging James P. Hoffa took a swing at YRC Worldwide’s board of directors this week, attacking increases in cash retainers for directors.

Sandy Pope, president of Teamster Local 805 in New York City, wants YRC’s new board of directors to drop the increase in cash retainers and bonuses.

Click here to read more at The Journal of Commerce.

September 9, 2011: A U.S. District Court judge in Tacoma on Thursday enjoined International Longshore and Warehouse Union picketers from engaging in violence and impeding rail or ship traffic at the new EGT grain terminal in Longview, Wash.

Larry Clarke, EGT’s chief executive officer, said the company plans to bring the grain export terminal fully online.

Click here to read more at The Journal of Commerce.

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 of the audit/ethics committee. The board chairman, James Hoffman, will receive $125,000 in cash.

Click here to read more at the Kansas City Business Journal.

August 31, 2011: The freight national change of operations committee yesterday deadlocked over ABF’s proposed change, so it will not be put into effect at this time.

The proposal was vigorously opposed by some major locals, including Kansas City Local 41, Harrisburg Local 776, Atlanta Local 728 and St Louis Local 600, because it was a move to alter the national contract, and phase out parts of the road operation. Sadly, some Teamster officials from big ABF terminals didn’t show up or only raised token objections.

ABF proposed to use utility employees to replace regular road turn-arounds and meet-and-turns, by moving 119 drivers out of the breakbulks and replacing them with utility employees at outlying terminals.

Chicago Locals 705 and 710 also objected to the change. A letter from Local 710 secretary treasurer Pat Flynn complained that the IBT had “usurped our authority and took over our autonomy,” but that the directive still “protected our contract and our members.” Flynn stated that any utility drivers dispatched into Chicago area terminals could not perform any dock and yard work.

Another factor against the change was Hoffa’s utter lack of support in freight, where a big majority are expected to vote for Sandy Pope in October. Hoffa and Tyson Johnson need to pretend that they care about contract enforcement.

The use of utility drivers to replace regular linehaul turnarounds is a violation of the contract. When the contract was being voted on, the IBT issued a bulletin (January 15, 2008) which stated “The UE will not replace “meet-and-turn” or existing mainline longhaul turn runs.”

ABF management, in the preamble to the proposed change, stated flat out that they want to replace road turns with utility employees. The preamble essentially explains that since ABF has not gotten concessions like YRC, they need some operational relief to thrive.

The proposed change is available here.

What will happen now? No official word yet. ABF could propose a similar change, but move road work without trying to convert the runs to utility employees.

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 for about a year in 2004, he said.

Click here to read more at Bloomberg.

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 to get rock-solid with our network and have a disciplined process for running the network." Welch, who started at YRC 13 days ago, did not provide specifics.

Click here to read more at DC Velocity.

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 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 a profit, but they didn't. They lost 38.7 million dollars. Sure they lost less money than they did in the first quarter, but they still haven't posted a profit in four years. It's ridiculous that this company spins its ills as thrills of greatness.

Click here to read more.

July 26, 2011: Here are two articles regarding the direction YRC may be headed, and its new CEO.

Welch’s Salary and YRC’s Reverse Stock Split

Will YRC Dump China Operations?

July 23, 2011: YRC will soon have a new CEO, whose name will be familiar to many former Yellow Teamsters: James L. Welch. This will be announced tomorrow by YRC, but word has leaked out for the past two weeks.

An article in DC Velocity is available here.

Welch was the CEO of Yellow Transportation until 2007, so it appears to be a reunion of sorts, bringing a Yellow veteran back to the driver’s seat.

During that period Welch was in charge of Yellow, Yellow owned Roadway but the two carriers operated separately. After 2007 he became the Interim CEO of JHT Holdings, which operates nonunion and union divisions in the truckhaul (driveaway) sector of the carhaul industry. In November 2008 he became the CEO of Dynamex, a same-day delivery company. In 2009 his compensation at Dynamex was $457,242 plus a considerable sum in stock options, and an additional $246,000 as a director of SkyWest and Spirit AeroSystems.

On June 29 at the Teamster Convention in Las Vegas, Freight Director Tyson Johnson stated he looked forward to working with the new CEO, and that the new management has the best interest of the employees at heart.