That rumor has circulated among the CFI drivers' lounges since about five minutes after the merger. It's based largely on the notion that Con-way is somehow behind on payments to the former owners of CFI, allowing those former owners to re-claim the company. The genius part of the rumor is the fact that those spreading it are apparently unaware that Con-way was never making payments to the former owners, as many of you have lamented in discussions of the bridge loan and subsequent financing vehicles.
Some others:
The old CFI is opening in Tulsa as part of Melton.
Con-way wanted to give us a five cent raise, but the CFI brass made it one cent. We're getting the other four cents on {insert an upcoming date here}.
We're all going to have to load our own trailers on Con-way linehaul loads beginning on {insert an upcoming date here}.
We're being required to get 'T' endorsements.
{Insert bizarre number or percentage here} drivers have quit because everything sucks now that Con-way owns the company.
Herb Schmidt is leaving the company to run for mayor of Joplin. (This one goes back even further than the merger.)
All solo drivers will be forced to run as teams.
I'm sure there are more.
I can tell you how at least one CFI driver likes his job now as a Con-way employee. The logo on the doors of the trucks is a little prettier, I suppose. Other than that nothing has really changed.
The trucks were going to be turned down anyway. Anyone who didn't see the writing on the wall when fuel was $4.50 a gallon is a moron.
It's hard to say with any specificity, but I think that the health insurance options got marginally better for us. My cost (individual) went up by a couple bucks a week, as one would expect each year with or without a new corporate boss.
The 401(k) match was improved, then taken away. I guess, since the Truckload end has remained profitable, the argument could be made that we wouldn't have lost this if we were still CFI. Given the overall climate of the industry though, I would expect that we would have lost it anyhow.
We got a penny raise while our holiday pay, safety bonus, and vacation stayed the same. Our drop pay and detention were improved slightly. Miles were certainly down at the start of last year, but again this seemed to be an industry-wide issue rather than a Con-way one. To be perfectly honest, if nobody had ever told me that we were sold, I wouldn't have seen any reason to suspect that CFI had changed at all over the last couple of years. Companies adjust little things here and there as time goes on and CFI always did as well, before Con-way bought the company.
One thing to keep in mind when these conversations arise - OTR drivers are, in general, some of the most dishonest and bitter people on the planet. I haven't figured out if this job makes people that way or if it simply attracts people who are already that way. I live by myself with very few responsibilities and I have a short attention span, so I tend to get a kick out of the randomness of it all. Maybe these guys with families and such are just miserable with the experience in general. I don't know. Anyhow, since we're believing what Truckload drivers say now, I have this bridge to sell...
One other note regarding the "goodwill impairment" taken earlier this year. Before I got fed up with people and ran away to be a truck driver, I worked in the financial world. My sense at the time of the earnings report was that the company saw an opportunity during a bad quarter to make an adjustment for the new 'perceived' market value of CFI. If they had done it in a decent quarter it would have stood out more. Since they did it at a time when the whole industry was cutting left and right, it wasn't shocking to any analysts. Now, going forward, the return on equity will look better to the shareholders since they'll still bank whatever earnings are reported, but they'll do so with a company that is 'worth' less money. This isn't official or anything. Just my take on the report when it came out. The hard assets obviously didn't go anywhere, but a little accounting gimmick might make some people look smarter down the road.
The only place Truckload is going, is to your yard, with your freight, instead of you.