Guys, I think that we've all heard enough. Here's reality: Yellow has always had a large debt load. Roadway did too until Caliber spun them off debt-free. That's a darn good position to be in, and Big R capitalized on it. They had to!! Roadway's IT system is garbage. Their rolling stock inventory had a disproportionate amount of rusted junk. Their operating strata was questionable at best, and their marketing was crappy. Many of their terminal buildings were hovels. But, they were debt-free.
Yellow had a top-notch IT system, generally good equipment, good facilities for the most part, good marketing, good service and generally very productive employees. However, they were plauged by arrogance in the General Office, unacceptable purchasing actions by the Board and Bill "I never saw a company I wouldn't over-pay for" Zollars, and the huge debt load that accompanied that.
So, when the doo-doo hit the fan in 2008, what they SHOULD have done was named the merged company "Yellow Roadway", not YRC that nobody knew who they were. They should have taken the best attributes of both companies; instead, they took the worst of both. They made catastrophic business decisions that we are all paying for today. "They" are mostly all gone, either fired or have run away.
Today, our service is deplorable. We are just slightly larger than ONE of the former companies. When we begrudgingly voted to "save our company" in 2009, that was a farce. Nearly half of the jobs we were "saving" have disappeared. Our fleet is very aged, which has caused our safety and vehicle maintenance statistics to climb out of control. We still are plauged by arrogance at the General Office, but now it's coupled with bad morale in the field. Many of our lower and middle managers are incompetent, but the company can't get any better because they don't pay well enough. Many of our senior managers are clue-less, but they have the arrogance to offset that. Many of our experienced front-liners are leaving, and we can't get enough replacements because the pay isn't good enough to atttract them.
To add to our woes, we have the arrogant slobs in the General Office regularly stirring up trouble, further eroding morale. Have you already gotten fan mail for neglecting to put your trailer number on a BOL, or the time on a D/R? In the time it took them to write that letter, they could have corrected at least ten such oversights, and called you in to verbally chew on you the next day.
I could go on and on, but I don't want all of you to fall down from exhaustion before finishing your read on this.
