Chris Dowdy counts he and his wife, Paula, and their family among the lucky ones. The subject of this edition of Overdrive Radio is one ripped right from the last month or so of a myriad headlines — the bankruptcy and ceasing operations of Yellow. The LTL giant finally shut down after being propped up by an astounding amount of loaned money straight from the U.S. taxpayer in recent years. That followed the business generally struggling financially for many more years.
The largely union workforce there was a home for many, many people, though, and that included Dowdy for a substantial part of the last decade or so. If his name sounds familiar, longtime Overdrive readers among you may well recall his time driving for Wooten Transports with a home base in Memphis, when he spearheaded an initiative he called Truckers for Hope.
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As noted, though, he’s one of the lucky ones, soon to start a regional gig doing what he’s done for most of the past quarter-century — “harassing traffic,” as he puts it, joking. (Yeah, he means “driving.”) Others laid off with Yellow shutting down haven’t been so lucky, though, particularly worrisome for Dowdy the prospects for dock hands and clerks and other non-CDL folks there. It’s no secret now isn’t exactly a wonderful time for freight and rates, as company driver job postings remained fairly low in the most recent full month, according to data compiled by the recruiting intelligence Stratas platform from Overdrive parent company Randall Reilly. .
At once, in this week’s podcast, Dowdy wonders at the dozens of applications he’s put in responding to company job posts. With the exception of the side move he’s now making to another union driving position, he’s received very little in response to those applications. Issues with prior employment verification at Yellow is one possible complication holding things up among recruiting departments, to say nothing of equipment availability as well as the generally slower freight market at the present.
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He also emphasizes throughout the podcast that, as with any such company implosion, though business press charts the financial missteps, ensuing lawsuits, battles over creditors and the like, what’s often lost in coverage is the toll it all takes on the individual people who are cast off to scramble for their future.
Hear Dowdy’s story here:
[Related: How a Yellow bankruptcy might influence freight, used-truck markets]
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