Remember these guys? They didn’t get any warning that their company was going to close it’s doors did they? Were there signs that were ignored by the drivers? Was there an exodus of drivers before the gates got locked and the drivers were left swinging in the wind out on the road? I’m not sure as I have yet to talk to an ex-Arrow driver about this subject. What I can tell you is there are sign where I work that I don’t like. I work for a small trucking company that has about forty or so trucks and about sixty or so trailers. We run out of the Midwest, primarily the St. Louis metro area and back, I am home every weekend and run near or better than 2500 miles in about six days. When I first started here it was not the job that I moved here for, the job that I thought that I had waiting for me didn’t materialize after we moved. I didn’t want to go back on the road full time so I took this job until I could find something better. It wasn’t long after I started working here that I started seeing signs that the economy might be affecting this company.
I have worked for smaller trucking companies before so seeing that they were trying to keep older trailers repaired rather than buy new ones didn’t worry me. It was the health insurance that was the first sign. I say the first sign but the first sign of what? I don’t know that they are going under but the economy is definitely affecting them. The health insurance when I started was Blue Cross/Blue Shield and it was a little pricey but it was really nice insurance. $20 co-pays, no deductibles, full coverage, it was nice. Not more than nine months later they dropped that insurance for something else that had a big deductible, didn’t pay as much for prescriptions and didn’t have a very good co-pay, and it costs a whole lot more a month. It seems that they opted for a plan that they didn’t have to kick as much in on their part. I had to switch from a diabetic medication that actually worked, to one that didn’t work nearly as well. I have been struggling to pass my DOT physical ever since. With this insurance my crappy meds cost me $12.00 for a months supply. If I were to get the old meds it would be $280.00 a month.
Most trucking companies today are going to the Diesel powered APU’s to cut fuel costs and reduce Idling. This company has been trying to use old worn out battery operated APU’s. They don’t cool worth a dang, they only blow around 60 degree air and most drivers know that in order for an air conditioner to work correctly it needs to blow near 40 degrees. Most of these no longer work even at 60 degrees so the driver has to suffer because the vast majority of these trucks are set up to shut off after about five minutes of idling. We had the worst fuel card in the industry, Multi-Service, it was a dial up card that more often than not failed so you always had five to ten ticked off drivers behind you in line. You couldn’t use it at the pump and near the end of our usage of that card it had a $1000.00 limit per week on it. Now we have another new card so we jumped from one fuel card that had a credit problem to another.
They have bought about forty new Peterbuilts and fifty new Utility trailers in an attempt to get rid of the vast maintenance costs but it doesn’t seem to me to be working. Here lately when I go through tollbooths I get the ole “check account balance” message. Over a month ago my transmission’s synchronizer went out to the tune of over $3000.00 worth of repairs. I have been in a nasty truck that I have had to clean my way into ever since. My radio’s are all in that truck as I thought for sure that it would be fixed in a week. Today I find out that is has been fixed for a week but Freightliner won’t release it until they pay the bill! All this time I have been told that it was fixed and that it will be back in a couple of days. How much am I being lied to about? The battery operated under bunk air conditioner doesn’t work in this truck and thank goodness that this truck idles but I keep hearing about the fuel mileage on this truck every week. I’m not going to be hot as hell for anybody, they don’t go home and shut off the air conditioner at their house so neither am I shutting this off and try to sleep in 90-degree heat and above.
Most drivers in this industry live on the road off of payroll advances, its just an industry unspoken standard. We are used to it and don’t see it as a problem. A couple of weeks ago we got a message on the computer that starting July 1st there would be no more personal advances due to cash flow problems. That caused us to have a cash flow problem as we had to go out and pop $89 for an electric cooler and food for the truck. We adjusted ok but is this just another sign that they are in trouble? About 9 months ago they let a perfectly good dispatcher go, one that was much better than the other two, its just that the other two are family. So should I be worried about this company? If this company goes out I’m done with trucking and I’m not ready for that yet. I need few more years before I can take a pay cut and stay home. There really are not any worthwhile jobs near me at the moment. At least nothing with decent insurance, Insurance is the key.
If there are any former Arrow drivers out there let me know if you had any of these signs before they closed the doors will you? Anybody else out there experience this before a trucking company either closed or scaled down? I don’t think that I can take a scale down, as I am pretty low in the pecking order. I hope this isn’t the writing on the wall.
Stay Safe
TW
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