7 years ago, July 26th, 1999, we closed.

May God Bless everyone of you guys, my old friends and workmates!

I hope your life has worked out for the best. (Mine certainly did)

i wasn't around back then. what did the 151 stand for ?

Found this info on a web site :

The focus of this last century was vehicle technology and equipment acquisition. An example of this is the nickname Preston Trucking gave itself many years ago, "The 151 Line," alluding to how impressive Preston was for fielding 151 pieces of equipment. This year, with over 30,000 pieces of equipment, Preston went bankrupt.

in the top 100 United States companies to work for.
what happened to such a good LTL trucking company?

Preston started going into debt with their operation.
They would of went out of buisness a year,or two earlier than when Yellow purchased them.

Yellow took on all their debt but than the skimmed all their good money making acounts to be a part of Yellows customer base,than threw them away.
Oh well if you've got the money to purchase something,you also have every right to do with it what you want.

I know now with Yellows record of this sort of buisness practise,I'd much rather be a Yellow Freight driver than USF group,Roadway,or New Penn driver.

Its nice that Yellow is still keeping all these companies in tact,but who knows what will happen in the future?

I started with Preston in late 1987. They were debt free. Then, like you said-- they bought Saia. By Thanksgiving of 93 we should have closed our doors. That's when Yellow bought us. Yellow built our Richfield, Oh, 300 door terminal for us, and put Preston's name on it (although apparently keeping the deed in Yellow's name-- it went back to Yellow within a month after Preston closed). Yellow put Preston on its own, apart from Saia, so they could then put PTC real estate up for loan collateral.....and they wrote off PTC on their books as an IRS write-off. From 1993-1998,, PTC seemed to be guinia pigs for Yellow, perfecting next-day service. We worked for a wage concession-- ironically(?) equal to the same amount Yellow paid for us????? In 1998, Yellow sold PTC to 3 YFS VP's, and declared us debt-free. Yellow Corp got some cash out of the deal, but mainly the chance to write us off again......in 1999-- just about a month after the deadline where, if we closed, Yellow would have to absorb us and dovetail our seniority into their boards, PTC closed............(Yellow again refiled, and retook us off their taxes. Yellow took over our 600 refurbished 48' trailers we had on order, and the 600 pup trailers we had that had no name on the side.....)

Why would you ever be suspicious of Yellow?

at the expence of many good people.
With all these LTL companies going out of buisness why couldn't the Teamsters lobby congress to keep their members working?

After deregulation kicked in their was a lot of underhanded deals that took place by the biggest union LTL companies.
The discounting that destroyed the smaller LTL companies.

I know thats true,I had 17 &1/2 years with Hall's Motor Transit when they closed their doors for good March of 1986.
I worked as a spare for 11 more union LTL's to try to get my Teamsters years, but I was only able to get 20 years credit for my Teamsters pension.

Had I been able to get back with a union company fultime I'd of had 30 years credit in 1997.

But without the help of my local union hall.
I finaly gave up took a withdrawl
,and hired on with Overnite/UPS Freight now I'm in my 20th year with them,still working for at least another 2 &1/2 years to get a desent pension with them.

So believe me I can relate to all of you that worked for good trucking companies that are just history now.

Yes very sad times in the LTL trucking industry.