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FedEx Freight | Mass Layoffs

drivers laid off in 2001

they went to dls cha atl in the first round off the lay of and let go 200 company driver one month later they went trough atl cin stl kcy dls and elp and laid off anther 300 drivers i know i was in stl they cut us from 56 to 20 i was 18 and scared to death
 
I remember when Watkins hired a bunch of "city/combo" drivers, transferred them all without them knowing to a subsidiary of Watkins called "Fleet Service" and after 2 weeks dropped the pay from the $16.10 an hour down to $8 bucks per stop and then fired them all after it failed about 7 months later.
They were not allowed to transfer, they had to reapply for jobs they ALL thought they initially applied for in the beginning!!

These drivers were deceived and thought they were hired as Watkins drivers getting paid by the hour.

My point is, Watkins was not always upfront and honest all the time.

Kind of like some FEDEX drivers say nothing bad has ever happened to them and they don't know any drivers that have ever been treated unfair, etc., etc., etc.
And now some drivers the same about Watkins.
It seems to me all LTL companies are the same..same pile..different company..KWIM?
 
princess said:
I remember when Watkins hired a bunch of "city/combo" drivers, transferred them all without them knowing to a subsidiary of Watkins called "Fleet Service" and after 2 weeks dropped the pay from the $16.10 an hour down to $8 bucks per stop and then fired them all after it failed about 7 months later.
They were not allowed to transfer, they had to reapply for jobs they ALL thought they initially applied for in the beginning!!

These drivers were deceived and thought they were hired as Watkins drivers getting paid by the hour.

My point is, Watkins was not always upfront and honest all the time.

Kind of like some FEDEX drivers say nothing bad has ever happened to them and they don't know any drivers that have ever been treated unfair, etc., etc., etc.
And now some drivers the same about Watkins.
It seems to me all LTL companies are the same..same pile..different company..KWIM?
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Great post princess!!! I too used to talk like so many happy go lucky guys, untill I took the knife in the back. It only happens once and you never forget it. Now I get nervous when I see managment patting people on the back, there just looking for a soft spot!! You people at national hang in there and do what you gotta do. Your families come first!!! Good Luck!!!:hide:
 
kcdriver said:
they went to dls cha atl in the first round off the lay of and let go 200 company driver one month later they went trough atl cin stl kcy dls and elp and laid off anther 300 drivers i know i was in stl they cut us from 56 to 20 i was 18 and scared to death
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In 2001 no DLS p & d lost a job unless they got fired for something like getting a haircut on the clock while claiming to be at a sort and segregate (real incident). Contractors were added to city except those fired for cheating on stops and milage, linehaul stayed the same and a few dock/city combos went all p&d.
 
rebalancing act

These are not layoffs, these are position eliminations, aka rebalancing. The big National terminal in dallas is now without an Assistant Terminal Manager as of 10/15/07. Two dock supervisors gone and next week 13 linehaul bid runs will be gone. Any major terminations anywhere else ? When should we abandoned ship?
 
dlscontractor said:
These are not layoffs, these are position eliminations, aka rebalancing. The big National terminal in dallas is now without an Assistant Terminal Manager as of 10/15/07. Two dock supervisors gone and next week 13 linehaul bid runs will be gone. Any major terminations anywhere else ? When should we abandoned ship?
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I was told today by a red shirt that 400 jobs were lost in this realignment process. I know of 1 clerk with 10 yrs and another with 18 yrs were let go at seperate terminals.
 
FedEx is all about the nombers, so was American Freightways,WML was not. WML didnt monitor the numbers to see if they were productive. It is better in the Fed EX way of business to realign and cut. I said it a million times, FedEx bought WML priamrily for the Canada operation, this is a fact. I also said a million times that WML would ge parted out. WML never operated at the level of FedEx Freight. I hate whats happening to the WML employees, but in the new LTL world, if you dont work for one of the big dogs, your job is not secure. WML was never a big dog.
 
fartknocker said:
FedEx is all about the nombers, so was American Freightways,WML was not. WML didnt monitor the numbers to see if they were productive. It is better in the Fed EX way of business to realign and cut. I said it a million times, FedEx bought WML priamrily for the Canada operation, this is a fact. I also said a million times that WML would ge parted out. WML never operated at the level of FedEx Freight. I hate whats happening to the WML employees, but in the new LTL world, if you dont work for one of the big dogs, your job is not secure. WML was never a big dog.
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They shouldn't have lied and said no one would lose their job! They said it was going to be great! What a joke, just ell the truth so everyone has time to find employment elsewhere so don't lose everything!
 
Gold Chains said:
Why would FedEx pay $740 million in cash just for Watkins Canadian operation?
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Because Fedex tried to purchase Day + Ross several times and they refused. They made a wise move purchasing Watkins.......... We now have direct service to Canada as well as a complete LTL company. Unfortunatly our economy is at an all time low and most of the good jobs in America are being outsourced.:chairshot:
 
I have been in this business for 23 years, over the road and in the city. I have worked for Fedkins almost 9 years. I will have to say that Watkins was one of the best companies I ever worked for, even though they had their faults. I recall when Fedex took over how we all were worried about our job, and along came a HR rep saying don't worry just hold on, everything is going to be great, we've got a bright future. How we were told that we would be getting fedex's long haul freight and giving them our short haul, a 4 to 1 swap benefiting us. So far we have seen none of this materialize. Our bill count has declined from close to 200 down to about 30 a day if were lucky. We lost three people in this first round of terminations and I have a sick feeling it isn't the end of them at our barn. I have seen allot of drivers families suffer, hanging on, on the edge of losing everthing they've worked for, and now some of them put on the street, others forced to quit or face bankruptcy. I have been down this road before, three times. I see the writing on the wall and it's no purple promise. You are only a number, when your terminated be sure no one in harrison will lose on wink of sleep. I have given many hard years of backbreaking labor to "the man", there is no two way street when it comes to loyalty anymore. All the oldscool people are dead or dying along with a way of treating people who did a good job because it was a reflection of your family name, and days when your word and a handshake meant something. I am not drinking their koolaid anymore, can't affor it on 20 hrs a week.
Sorry for rambling, I'm just fed up with it all and tired of fight'in it.:smilie_132:
 
FXFE said:
Because Fedex tried to purchase Day + Ross several times and they refused. They made a wise move purchasing Watkins.......... We now have direct service to Canada as well as a complete LTL company.
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Yes, I understand that. But the point was made that FedEx just bought Watkins for the Canadian operations. But why pay $740 million cash, rebrand all the trailers, re-engineer routes, issue uniforms (a $13 million cost alone), etc just for Canadian?

deerhunter said:
I have given many hard years of backbreaking labor to "the man", there is no two way street when it comes to loyalty anymore.
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C'mon driver, what does FedEx or Watkins "owe" you? Nobody owes anyone anything.
 
bitter

FXFE said:
Because Fedex tried to purchase Day + Ross several times and they refused. They made a wise move purchasing Watkins.......... We now have direct service to Canada as well as a complete LTL company. Unfortunatly our economy is at an all time low and most of the good jobs in America are being outsourced.:chairshot:
Click to expand...

I would not point to the economy first. Fed ex ran a successful ltl business by regions. Watkins was successfully running a ltl company on the north american continent + Hawaii and puerto rico. They new how to get a skid from miami to seattle with a profit or mexico city to maine. Ego tripping fedex executives thought they could slap their successful regional blueprint on a continental sized service area. What fools. What a injustice to those who have their lives impacted negatively for a few fools egos at the top. If the big shots were really smart they would have left the Watkins system alone, slapped a few "A Fedex Owned Company" stickers below the Watkins tags, and kept reaping the profits that the Watkins Company generated. But no these ego driven fools with college degrees their parents payed for believe they know more than successfully continental ltl Pros. They just show that you might get a MBA or another degree but still will not know crap about employee and business success.
 
deerhunter said:
I have been in this business for 23 years, over the road and in the city. I have worked for Fedkins almost 9 years. I will have to say that Watkins was one of the best companies I ever worked for, even though they had their faults. I recall when Fedex took over how we all were worried about our job, and along came a HR rep saying don't worry just hold on, everything is going to be great, we've got a bright future. How we were told that we would be getting fedex's long haul freight and giving them our short haul, a 4 to 1 swap benefiting us. So far we have seen none of this materialize. Our bill count has declined from close to 200 down to about 30 a day if were lucky. We lost three people in this first round of terminations and I have a sick feeling it isn't the end of them at our barn. I have seen allot of drivers families suffer, hanging on, on the edge of losing everthing they've worked for, and now some of them put on the street, others forced to quit or face bankruptcy. I have been down this road before, three times. I see the writing on the wall and it's no purple promise. You are only a number, when your terminated be sure no one in harrison will lose on wink of sleep. I have given many hard years of backbreaking labor to "the man", there is no two way street when it comes to loyalty anymore. All the oldscool people are dead or dying along with a way of treating people who did a good job because it was a reflection of your family name, and days when your word and a handshake meant something. I am not drinking their koolaid anymore, can't affor it on 20 hrs a week.
Sorry for rambling, I'm just fed up with it all and tired of fight'in it.:smilie_132:
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well said deerhunter
 
I dint mean that Fedex bought WML JUST for the Canada, but it was the primary reason. Maybe they overestimated hoe successful long haul is. I NEVER heard that Freight would swap all of the longhaul with WML. I always heard that WML was a less expensive option for the customer. If you want to go coast to coast in three or four days call Freight, if you want it coast to coast in five to seve days and pay less call National. Those are sample number I used for an example.
 
dlscontractor said:
I would not point to the economy first. Fed ex ran a successful ltl business by regions. Watkins was successfully running a ltl company on the north american continent + Hawaii and puerto rico. They new how to get a skid from miami to seattle with a profit or mexico city to maine. Ego tripping fedex executives thought they could slap their successful regional blueprint on a continental sized service area. What fools. What a injustice to those who have their lives impacted negatively for a few fools egos at the top. If the big shots were really smart they would have left the Watkins system alone, slapped a few "A Fedex Owned Company" stickers below the Watkins tags, and kept reaping the profits that the Watkins Company generated. But no these ego driven fools with college degrees their parents payed for believe they know more than successfully continental ltl Pros. They just show that you might get a MBA or another degree but still will not know crap about employee and business success.
Click to expand...
:1036316054: KUDO'S TO YOU BUD!! you said it all there. I worked for watkins for 21 years and have been in this what used to be a good business since 1976. I have seen my share of changes in this industry for sure. I remember a lot of truck lines coming and going that most people have never even heard of. I really hate seeing another ripped to shreds like watkins is being done. Everyone always talks about all the money outlay fedex has made in this acquisition, but it is chump change and can be wrote off as a business loss, no big deal, a one time charge at the end of fiscal year... woo hoo...Stockholders will not stand by and keep letting fedex pour good money after bad. you know its going to happen, just when since it is publicly held, we will be the last to know. everyone can speculate all they want, but until the axe falls we are all nothing more than a pawn in a game of chess that fedex is getting its *** kicked by something that i have to agree on, they should have left a good thing alone and just opened up their pockets a little wider to catch all the money that would have been falling into them had they left watkins alone to run as a seperate entity instead of trying to fatten fedex freights pockets trying to take 90% of watkins freight away that the company had developed and shippers had entrusted watkins to haul since 1932...unbelievable...:chairshot: ....all good things must eventually come to an end, such as the circle of life.
 
I just don't get how Fedkins is doing so bad in the mid west and east coast. I was talking to a Watkins driver the other night and he said they are actively looking for 6 more local drivers due to volume and that they were expanding the San Bernardino,CA Break Bulk by almost twice the size it is now(that place is enormous). I really hope some of this freight gets to you guys east of California so you can get the work you need. I do have to say although we are a very expensive place to live(California), its too bad that some of you all cannot move out this way. We don't seem to follow the normal trend of freight levels that the rest of the USA goes through. As a matter of fact my SC is up over 100 bills a day compared to this time frame a year ago.
 
[
C'mon driver, what does FedEx or Watkins "owe" you? Nobody owes anyone anything.[/QUOTE]


So right...you worked, they paid end of story. If I decide to leave Fed Ex It'll be that day...no notice just see ya. If you don't plan on going back over that bridge....go ahead and burn it !!!
 
I hate to see anyone lose ther job, but WML had a 92.? % operating ratio.
Freight's is considerably lower, in the low 80's I've heard. Who didn't see this comming really? truck safe dave
 
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