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A Brutal Bankruptcy

Arrow Trucking’s website says it is “one of the country’s largest and most financially sound flatbed motor carriers”. The Tulsa, OK company employs 1400 drivers and 200 office staff. Their website accepts driver applications and says the company “provides quality experience for drivers.” They use two types of drivers, the independent operators (who own their own trucks) and the drivers (who drive trucks the company owns). Drivers buy fuel for the trucks using company credit cards.

Arrow declared bankruptcy several days before Christmas. No warning, no winding down and no information. Their “quality experience for drivers” included cancelling their fuel cards and leaving them stranded on the road days before Christmas. A recorded message on the company phones kindly offered to buy the drivers a bus ticket home if they turned their rigs in at designated sites.

Some drivers don’t have a permanent residence — they live in their trucks. So much for the kind offer. Some have a residence but travel with their spouses and pets. Fortunately, the news spread fast and others offered the Arrow drivers/spouses/pets help and rides home. There is also a Facebook page “Support Stranded Arrow Truckers”.

What about Arrow’s customers?  The website says they are “prepared to devote our undivided attention to every one of your loads.” One wonders what happened to the loads as drivers scrambled for fuel and a way home.

There were warning signs. Unpaid bills. Some payroll checks weren’t cut and others bounced in recent months.

YRC, a less than a truck-load hauler based in Overland, KS, narrowly averted bankruptcy with a debt to equity swap recently. They are also under negotiations with their creditors. The Teamsters Union, representing the drivers, were instrumental in putting the deals together. On Dec 31, they set a record when their stock traded at $0.80, the lowest price in NYSE history. They operate trucks under the Yellow, Roadway and New Penn brands.

The lawyers are circling. Arrow’s actions violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. The WARN act requires companies to give staff two month’s notice before closing down.

 

Last year, one of my clients declared bankruptcy. They told me I needed to do some work for them in order to get paid. Like an idiot, I believed them. I never got a dime. “It’s not personal”, they said. Actually, bankruptcy is VERY personal.

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