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This is a story of the good, the bad and the ugly.
By Advance Business Capital
We'll start with…
The Bad
It's three days before Christmas, blizzards are sweeping parts of the country, and some 900 drivers are on the road for Arrow Trucking, the country's ninth largest flatbed carrier. Without notice, at company headquarters in
Tulsa, approximately 200 workers are told to pack up and leave.
The same day, drivers discover their company-issued fuel cards have been turned off. When they call in to headquarters, if they're able to get through at all, they get a recorded message telling them to turn in their rigs at the nearest dealer. And those trucks weren’t the only rubber on the road: so were all Arrow paychecks issued on the 15th.
The Good
Happily, along with Arrow’s shabby behavior, there are lots of shining stars in this saga. As soon as news of Arrow’s shutdown got out, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association started getting calls. Some were from Arrow drivers left in the lurch. Even more were from other truckers offering help. The OOIDA folks sprang into action, setting up a Facebook page to coordinate efforts. Soon there were thousands of responses. (The site, Facebook-SupportArrowTruckers, continues to be active, as the plight of former Arrow drivers is far from over.)
The kindness of strangers was widespread: cash for fuel, rides home, hot meals, laundry services, even a place to stay in someone's home. After all, some truckers lived in their rigs, and now they were homeless as well as jobless. Arrow driver Tyree Samson was afraid his rig would be repossessed if he went inside a truck stop for food. Another trucker volunteered to park his own alongside to shield Samson's from a possible tow truck. And, said Samson, yet another trucker gave him a $100 gift card for fuel “or to buy something for my wife for Christmas. People were truly amazing.”
“Amazing” is how Jenn Cruthis, an Arrow driver herself (and stiffed by same for $787 in repair costs) also described the truckers’ response. “They'll sit on the radio and curse at each other all day and fight all day and then for them to stand up and help everybody like this? It's great.”
Even trucking companies pitched in. Daimler and Navistar, who were leasing rigs to Arrow, provided a Greyhound ticket or $200 in travel expenses to each driver who dropped off a truck. That helped many, but not all, such as Daniel Evang of Valdosta, Georgia. Evang was in Phoenix to pick up a load when he got the bad news. Since the offer of a bus ticket home didn't extend to his traveling companions—his wife Peggy and their dog—Evang bit the bullet and drove back, helping another stranded Arrow driver along the way.
The Ugly
We all know it’s been a rough couple of years for trucking. In the 3rd quarter of 2009, 1,255 trucking firms with five or more drivers went under. Of those, 95% were companies with 20 or fewer trucks. That’s bad, but it’s still only a series of small-scale disasters. However, when a behemoth like Arrow with 1,400 flatbed trucks and 2,600 trailers fails, that doesn’t just make ripples in the economy; it makes waves.
So what happened? No doubt the Arrow Trucking story will be a classic business school case study some day: a well-regarded 61-year-old company abruptly shuts down, leaving unpaid vendors, unpaid drivers, disrupted lives. Right now, there are a lot of unknowns about Arrow's demise, but the company's recent history suggests poor management, poor judgment, and… um, casual work ethic among top officials.
Even Uglier Speculations
Just ask Napoleon Bonaparte: retreat is the most difficult of maneuvers, even for a military genius, and top management at Arrow apparently wasn’t full of geniuses. The business had been in trouble for at least two years. In 2008 and 2009 there were seven judgments against Arrow for nonpayment of bills. Plaintiffs ranged from the expected (Michelin North America) to the unexpected (Nosak Tree Services). A recent class-action suit charges that “company malfeasance” included failure not only to contribute to pension and 401k accounts but to even forward employee medical insurance premiums.
Troubles came to a head in December. It couldn’t have been unforeseen. The usual business resort is to file for bankruptcy, which provides a fair and orderly way to rebuild or go out of business. Inexplicably, Arrow made no such effort, a failure so bizarre it sounds like denial on a corporate level.
There’s probably enough blame to go around but many former employees heap a lot on Arrow CEO Doug Pielsticker. After his father and company co-founder Jim Pielsticker died in a 2001 plane crash, Pielsticker essentially took the helm. While the business foundered and bills went unpaid, Pielsticker was enjoying an extravagant lifestyle and frequent holidays to Aspen and Costa Rica, much of it blithely on display on his Facebook page (which has since gone private). In an obstinately American industry, Pielsticker drove to work in cars such as a British Bentley and Italian Maserati. His wife bought him a Ducati motorcycle for his birthday, reportedly the same model owned by Jay Leno.
Say, Buddy, Can You Loan Me a Home?
Pielsticker probably has his own side to tell, but so far he hasn’t been available for comment. In the meantime, his $3.9 million home has gone on the market. Hopefully he and his wife have found other accommodations, because it’s unlikely any Arrow truckers will offer to put them up. Leona Lambert, the wife of one driver, seemed to speak for many with her post on a popular industry forum (TruckersReport) with a litany of Arrow transgressions that concluded, “If hell has a place for trucking companies, you are at the top of the list and not because of alphabetically. It’s because you suck.”
This story was drawn from "Truckers Band Together to Help Those Dumped by Arrow" CSMonitor, "Is This Any Way to Lay Off Workers?" CSMonitor and articles in LandLine Magazine and Valdosta Daily Times and The Tulsa World and Council Bluffs Iowa Daily Nonpareil
By Advance Business Capital , www.advancebcap.com/
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