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undead

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the loading system and cross docking are not working too many returns missed pick ups. Damages are still excessive. Company wide terminal mgrs and routers that are incompetant, inbound and outbound supervisors who are indifferant to reality. Equipment in need of repair or replacement. New workers with no training or skills in LTL trucking. Office workers who can not enter delivery reciepts, manifests accurately, miss loading of inbound and outbound freight. As a company we have lost 33% of a daily freight bills since last yr. The work force on edge because of the uncerainty of the future. I go to work everyday and give my best as most of us do on a daily basis but who can turn this around in the short time we have
 
undead said:
the loading system and cross docking are not working too many returns missed pick ups. Damages are still excessive. Company wide terminal mgrs and routers that are incompetant, inbound and outbound supervisors who are indifferant to reality. Equipment in need of repair or replacement. New workers with no training or skills in LTL trucking. Office workers who can not enter delivery reciepts, manifests accurately, miss loading of inbound and outbound freight. As a company we have lost 33% of a daily freight bills since last yr. The work force on edge because of the uncerainty of the future. I go to work everyday and give my best as most of us do on a daily basis but who can turn this around in the short time we have
Click to expand...
No one has the answers to that right now. I can say this however this company can be turned around. I will take millions more to do that by getting the right TM's in place....That really is the key. Because they run the show from ground level. The problem they have now is good TM's are hard to find. They are all working for the OD's of the world. We are on the right path but it will take MILLIONS more to fine tune this machine. We have a good footprint and are building a good foundation. We just need massive amounts of money to finish the job. And that's the truth .....Believe it or not.
 
And Good TM's cost big money.....And the supervisors under them cost big money.....See we are just promoting incompetent supervisors from within that haven't a clue what they are doing. I will give you an example of a good TM....I was at a customers yesterday and he was talking to the TM of Southeastern here in Dallas....He was pissed and yelling at him because he refused to have his driver pickup his freight because it was a 24 foot long bundle of pipe banded together weighing 3000 pounds. It was being loaded with a special forklift that handles the long sections. SEML had already paid a claim for the one before because they had no way to get it out without dragging it. This TM not only instructs his drivers not to pickup certain things he also has their back when push comes to shove.....I could go on and on. You get what you pay for in management. Too many incompetent TM's at ground level with no checks and balances and no accountability at all. And until they fix that with the MILLIONS of dollars it will take we will continue to stumble about in a futile attempt to chase greatness.
 
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I don't work for this company but just a comment, the #1 rule of management is that most of them get promoted past their ability to do the job. It is not just this company, but more and more in all the LTL companies. They are all chasing pennys that are costing them big money in the end.
 
think about this concept if the mgt you hire had been fired from another company why would you think they will perform any better for you
 
That's why I say it's about money.....You must recruit the best by making them an offer they can't refuse. This is especially true with terminal managers. When you have a top flight TM he can determine top flight supervisors and the rest will fall into place....There are no short cuts or cheap way in building a successful LTL company. Chris Keylon should know by now that you are only as good as the people you have working for you.....If this company had unlimited resources it could turn this place around quickly, but they don't so they are stuck on auto pilot and making do with what they have. They need to go around and gut almost every terminal and replace them with top notch terminal managers but that takes MILLIONS and thats something they just don't have. So where does that leave us? Your guess is as good as mine.
 
What troubles me most about Vitran is I have noticed in the past four weeks a sudden return to the old Vitran attitude among everyone from Keylon to part-time dock workers.

It kills me that I cannot give specifics, but one decision after another has been old school Vitran.

Perhaps the money has been cut off and there is nothing more to be done. One thing for sure...at this rate from here on in this gig is a toss up. Either resources are not available to make good choices so bad ones are all we can afford, or management has gotten so close to the forest they can no l
onger see the trees.
 
runawaytrain said:
And Good TM's cost big money.....And the supervisors under them cost big money.....See we are just promoting incompetent supervisors from within that haven't a clue what they are doing. I will give you an example of a good TM....I was at a customers yesterday and he was talking to the TM of Southeastern here in Dallas....He was pissed and yelling at him because he refused to have his driver pickup his freight because it was a 24 foot long bundle of pipe banded together weighing 3000 pounds. It was being loaded with a special forklift that handles the long sections. SEML had already paid a claim for the one before because they had no way to get it out without dragging it. This TM not only instructs his drivers not to pickup certain things he also has their back when push comes to shove.....I could go on and on. You get what you pay for in management. Too many incompetent TM's at ground level with no checks and balances and no accountability at all. And until they fix that with the MILLIONS of dollars it will take we will continue to stumble about in a futile attempt to chase greatness.
Click to expand...

SEFL will not handle garbage freight like that. The SEFL drivers are instructed to refuse large overdimensional freight and if confronted by the customer they are to call their manager. Remember, SEFL does 30,000 bills per day in their 12 state coverage area. They load direct from every terminal to every terminal every night. We do 10,000 bills in double the number of states they service with a much longer linehaul footprint. So for every shipment we pick up to any given state, they pick up five. So Train, I beg to differ. I see this ship going down in less than one year and most likely much sooner. I give it less than two months before something big and tumultuous happens.
 
Let me clarify my position. Without Millions of cash infused into this company very soon we will continue down the path of failure. Let me create a hypothetical situation....Lets say we got bought out by a UPS freight (which would never happen) a company with massive amounts of money. They could clean house and turn this place around because they have the resources. That's the point I'm trying to make. We will most likely sink very quickly without some sort of buyout from someone with unlimited resources. I first see a pretty good size layoff this winter if we make it that far. They must cut overhead quickly to stop the cash burn. This company is a prime example of what happens when you put the horse behind the cart. Millions could even turn this hell hole around, its amazing what hard cold cash can do. I don't see this happening that's why I said hypothetical.
 
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runawaytrain said:
And Good TM's cost big money.....And the supervisors under them cost big money.....See we are just promoting incompetent supervisors from within that haven't a clue what they are doing. I will give you an example of a good TM....I was at a customers yesterday and he was talking to the TM of Southeastern here in Dallas....He was pissed and yelling at him because he refused to have his driver pickup his freight because it was a 24 foot long bundle of pipe banded together weighing 3000 pounds. It was being loaded with a special forklift that handles the long sections. SEML had already paid a claim for the one before because they had no way to get it out without dragging it. This TM not only instructs his drivers not to pickup certain things he also has their back when push comes to shove.....I could go on and on. You get what you pay for in management. Too many incompetent TM's at ground level with no checks and balances and no accountability at all. And until they fix that with the MILLIONS of dollars it will take we will continue to stumble about in a futile attempt to chase greatness.
Click to expand...

Most of the tms' ur vitran will throw any one of their people under the bus so they can keep their job just a little longer. I believe they about $17milloon left in the bank.... just enough to get them through the 3rd quarter. If Vitran would shut down operations it would happen before the end of the year. Its too bad tho because Vitran was a decent company to work for when I started. But too many bad decisions killed them.
 
runawaytrain said:
And Good TM's cost big money.....And the supervisors under them cost big money.....See we are just promoting incompetent supervisors from within that haven't a clue what they are doing.
Click to expand...
Maybe, or maybe not. If a company has a bad business model you can throw all the money in the world at it and all your doing is masking the problem. This company HAD a lot of loyal, hard working, long term employees. These were people who cared and had a personal interest in the survival and prosperity of this company. Some of your TM's and supervisors were drivers who had worked their way up the ladder. During the lead up to the PJAX purchase (and even before) many of these people were replaced with more "corporate minded" individuals. I know because I was one. Some people who didn't want to "play ball" were simply cut loose. I had the opportunity to speak with Dennis Moriarty, and asked him if he thought Vitran could survive as it is currently structured, his answer....NO. What we are trying to do ( service entire states with 1 or maybe 2 terminals) is extremely difficult, you have to have good paying freight (which we don't) you need drivers that can really hustle (which have lost a lot of) if your going to run a 400 mile route you need to leave the terminal before 9 AM (which we don't) and you need equipment that can move faster than a moped (which we don't have anymore). I think Moriarty gets it, Keylon on the other hand I just don't know.

There was an earlier thread asking about layoffs and my response to that would be, well it's about time. If you remember the conference call one of the reporters even asked why our labor costs haven't dropped given the fact that revenue was down 10%.
While I don't want to see anyone lose their job the sad reality is, if there isn't enough work to keep everyone busy then something has to give.
I'll give you a tiny example of what I think is wrong with this company. The barn I work out of used to do a lot of business, today we are down to a bill count of 90-120 per day. We have more than enough drivers to cover this freight. What we also have is 4-6 part-time dock employees, 3 supervisors, 3 office people, 1 salesman and a terminal manager. With the exception of the salesman that's at least 10 people on the payroll that have no direct contribution to our profit. At $17 million a quarter we simply can't afford this much overhead.
The tablets are cool, but expensive and have yet to show a meaningful improvement in productivity.
Linehaul has been restructured twice, in an effort to improve efficiency...well I'm still waiting. What I do know is that many of our line haul drivers have had their miles cut, some severely. I've taken my paycut to the tune of about $15,000 a year due to less miles.

Here is another suggestion...cut loose the cheap freight. We can't haul freight and lose money just for the sake of saying we have a full trailer, this is how owner-operators go broke. We would be better off shrinking the size of this company, keeping the good paying freight and making sure we get it DELIVERED ON TIME, DAMAGE FREE AND MAKE MONEY.
CONTRACTION....it's a dirty word but it may be the only thing that saves us. I would rather haul 30% less freight at 98% on time, make money on it, and rebuild our reputation, versus what we are doing now.
Just my .02
 
very true less freight should equal less hrs on the payroll. losing 15,000 in your yearly pay is very rough it would make it difficult to stay
 
lambofgod said:
Most of the tms' ur vitran will throw any one of their people under the bus so they can keep their job just a little longer. I believe they about $17milloon left in the bank.... just enough to get them through the 3rd quarter. If Vitran would shut down operations it would happen before the end of the year. Its too bad tho because Vitran was a decent company to work for when I started. But too many bad decisions killed them.
Click to expand...

Actually have around 34.7 million left, enough to cover the 3rd and 4th Q losses, then what! Shard the panties and no toilet paper to clean up the mess.
 
biglarry28 said:
Maybe, or maybe not. If a company has a bad business model you can throw all the money in the world at it and all your doing is masking the problem. This company HAD a lot of loyal, hard working, long term employees. These were people who cared and had a personal interest in the survival and prosperity of this company. Some of your TM's and supervisors were drivers who had worked their way up the ladder. During the lead up to the PJAX purchase (and even before) many of these people were replaced with more "corporate minded" individuals. I know because I was one. Some people who didn't want to "play ball" were simply cut loose. I had the opportunity to speak with Dennis Moriarty, and asked him if he thought Vitran could survive as it is currently structured, his answer....NO. What we are trying to do ( service entire states with 1 or maybe 2 terminals) is extremely difficult, you have to have good paying freight (which we don't) you need drivers that can really hustle (which have lost a lot of) if your going to run a 400 mile route you need to leave the terminal before 9 AM (which we don't) and you need equipment that can move faster than a moped (which we don't have anymore). I think Moriarty gets it, Keylon on the other hand I just don't know.

There was an earlier thread asking about layoffs and my response to that would be, well it's about time. If you remember the conference call one of the reporters even asked why our labor costs haven't dropped given the fact that revenue was down 10%.
While I don't want to see anyone lose their job the sad reality is, if there isn't enough work to keep everyone busy then something has to give.
I'll give you a tiny example of what I think is wrong with this company. The barn I work out of used to do a lot of business, today we are down to a bill count of 90-120 per day. We have more than enough drivers to cover this freight. What we also have is 4-6 part-time dock employees, 3 supervisors, 3 office people, 1 salesman and a terminal manager. With the exception of the salesman that's at least 10 people on the payroll that have no direct contribution to our profit. At $17 million a quarter we simply can't afford this much overhead.
The tablets are cool, but expensive and have yet to show a meaningful improvement in productivity.
Linehaul has been restructured twice, in an effort to improve efficiency...well I'm still waiting. What I do know is that many of our line haul drivers have had their miles cut, some severely. I've taken my paycut to the tune of about $15,000 a year due to less miles.

Here is another suggestion...cut loose the cheap freight. We can't haul freight and lose money just for the sake of saying we have a full trailer, this is how owner-operators go broke. We would be better off shrinking the size of this company, keeping the good paying freight and making sure we get it DELIVERED ON TIME, DAMAGE FREE AND MAKE MONEY.
CONTRACTION....it's a dirty word but it may be the only thing that saves us. I would rather haul 30% less freight at 98% on time, make money on it, and rebuild our reputation, versus what we are doing now.
Just my .02
Click to expand...

Contraction might be a dirty word but that is what we have been doing for the past 3 years, still hauling $hittty freight that pays poorly, giving $hitty service and damaging the crap out of it. That is what we do and good paying customers with good quality freight won't come back, ever. We are done, roll over and stick a fork in us.
 
i think it's less than that, they paid loans off with that logistic company sale. the next holiday is labor day, that's when all the trucks will be back at their terminals. it would be a prime time to shut the doors and it would be a little over two months into the 3rd qtr. those two months could be another $10 mil+ loss by then and no end in sight. corp then calls the so-called driver trainers in to clean the freight off the dock while paying them a little extra to do so. who knows, but i think the closure will happen around a holiday weekend to make it easy as possible.
 
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biglarry28 said:
Maybe, or maybe not. If a company has a bad business model you can throw all the money in the world at it and all your doing is masking the problem. This company HAD a lot of loyal, hard working, long term employees. These were people who cared and had a personal interest in the survival and prosperity of this company. Some of your TM's and supervisors were drivers who had worked their way up the ladder. During the lead up to the PJAX purchase (and even before) many of these people were replaced with more "corporate minded" individuals. I know because I was one. Some people who didn't want to "play ball" were simply cut loose. I had the opportunity to speak with Dennis Moriarty, and asked him if he thought Vitran could survive as it is currently structured, his answer....NO. What we are trying to do ( service entire states with 1 or maybe 2 terminals) is extremely difficult, you have to have good paying freight (which we don't) you need drivers that can really hustle (which have lost a lot of) if your going to run a 400 mile route you need to leave the terminal before 9 AM (which we don't) and you need equipment that can move faster than a moped (which we don't have anymore). I think Moriarty gets it, Keylon on the other hand I just don't know.

There was an earlier thread asking about layoffs and my response to that would be, well it's about time. If you remember the conference call one of the reporters even asked why our labor costs haven't dropped given the fact that revenue was down 10%.
While I don't want to see anyone lose their job the sad reality is, if there isn't enough work to keep everyone busy then something has to give.
I'll give you a tiny example of what I think is wrong with this company. The barn I work out of used to do a lot of business, today we are down to a bill count of 90-120 per day. We have more than enough drivers to cover this freight. What we also have is 4-6 part-time dock employees, 3 supervisors, 3 office people, 1 salesman and a terminal manager. With the exception of the salesman that's at least 10 people on the payroll that have no direct contribution to our profit. At $17 million a quarter we simply can't afford this much overhead.
The tablets are cool, but expensive and have yet to show a meaningful improvement in productivity.
Linehaul has been restructured twice, in an effort to improve efficiency...well I'm still waiting. What I do know is that many of our line haul drivers have had their miles cut, some severely. I've taken my paycut to the tune of about $15,000 a year due to less miles.

Here is another suggestion...cut loose the cheap freight. We can't haul freight and lose money just for the sake of saying we have a full trailer, this is how owner-operators go broke. We would be better off shrinking the size of this company, keeping the good paying freight and making sure we get it DELIVERED ON TIME, DAMAGE FREE AND MAKE MONEY.
CONTRACTION....it's a dirty word but it may be the only thing that saves us. I would rather haul 30% less freight at 98% on time, make money on it, and rebuild our reputation, versus what we are doing now.
Just my .02
Click to expand...
Contraction is the only thing that will save us this winter. And they will lay off this winter. Everything you say is true but the bad business model was created by Gaetz not Keylon. Just my opinion so feel free to rip me. I'm to tired tonight to get into it. Will be back tomorrow with my statement.
 
had enough said:
nice avatar pic biglarry. lol.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

No need to rip on you Train I agree with you most of the time. Yes there is plenty of blame for Gaetz. My problem with Keylon is that I just don't know where his head is at. The first memo from Keylon was the announcement of a company store selling coffee mugs, t-shirts and golf balls with our logo.....that seemed....lets be nice and say mis-guided. Our next big announcement from CK was the opening of our new corporate headquarters. I still have the newsletter with the pictures. If your job is to help a company in deep financial trouble you don't waste your capital on fancy offices. If you need space that bad rent some office trailers or farm the work out to terminals that have unused space.
I guess my biggest problem is that if your losing 15-17 million a quarter you know where that money is going, it's not like a few checks fell behind a filing cabinet. I have zero power to change anything. All I can do is show up on time, drive my 61mph truck from point A to B, swap trailers and drive back to point A without crashing...that's it. There just doesn't seem to be a sense of urgency from CK there's no passion, no vision, unfortunately that's usually what you get when you bring in a "hired gun"
 
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