A tale of two truckers
Like Lazarus arisen from the dead, the one-time corpse
known as YRC Worldwide Inc. was out in force at last
month’s NASSTRAC annual meeting in Orlando, Fla. The
less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier’s exhibition booth was
abuzz with activity, with CEO James L. Welch smiling and
glad-handing shippers and third-party logistics service
providers.
About 1,100 miles away in Fort Smith, Ark., Judy R.
McReynolds, CEO of Arkansas Best Corp., the parent of
YRC rival ABF Freight System Inc., had other things on her
mind. Her company is locked in what has become a near
life-and-death struggle with the Teamsters union to reach
agreement on a new contract that calls for wage and pension cuts, as well as higher health care payments for workers. Without a satisfactory deal, ABF has warned that it
would have to scale back its network, shutter terminals,
and, invariably, lay off workers.
That’s not to say ABF wasn’t a presence at NASSTRAC. In
fact, for the third time in four years, the shipper group
named ABF its national LTL “Carrier of the Year,” a testament to ABF’s long-held and mostly undisputed reputation
for service excellence.
But for a publicly traded concern like ABF, awards, while
certainly appreciated, pale in importance at this point to the
$230 million in cumulative losses suffered since 2009. ABF
says much of the problem would disappear if its workers,
who are the best paid in the LTL industry, would accept modest wage cuts and benefit concessions that would still leave
them with higher salaries than YRC, and certainly higher
than the nonunion entities that have come to dominate LTL.
So far, it hasn’t gone well. Teamster leaders representing
7,500 ABF workers were not happy with the company’s late
April proposal, under which employees would take a 6.5-
percent across-the-board wage cut, accept reductions in
ABF’s pension contributions as well as caps on those contributions, and pay about $3,000 a year for family health
coverage, which is more than labor is accustomed to paying.
“We’ve put millions of dollars worth of operational relief
on the table, but that apparently is not enough,” said
Gordon Sweeton, co-chairman of the Teamsters ABF
National Negotiating Committee, in a statement April 19.
Still, both sides agreed to extend the current contract,
which expired on March 31, until the end of May in order
to continue talking. This marks the second consecutive
