My son graduated high school and decided he wasn’t interested in college right now.
He took a job unloading trucks with UPS last fall.
It is a hard job. Half the group hired on were gone by the first shift break. Within a week there were 4 people left out of the 36 they hired.
They were only allowed 10 minute breaks for part time shifts (5 hours).
They started at 3-4 AM normally, but once they hit the beginning of December and the holiday season he was going in at 12 AM and working 12 hour shifts and only given 2 more 10 minute breaks.
He was doing well during the holidays with the OT pay.
He came home with stories of over weight boxes falling on him when he opened up trucks all the time. Other workers treated him like dirt (a mild description). He strained his back once already as they are often left to move overweight boxes themselves regardless of what the “rules” say.
The management attitude is one of “get it done or leave”.
He is a hard worker, survived the holiday season and they offered to keep him on.
He had to start over from scratch as a new permanent employee.
He joined the union and started paying his dues.
Within a month he noticed his pay had been cut by over a dollar an hour and he was essentially making minimum wage with no OT possible.
They’re supposed to vote on the proposed changes in early August. I think they deserve to be paid and treated better.
I was hoping this job would be a lesson for him in “reality” and he would choose to start taking some classes part time.
A lot of people comment about how working for UPS can be a good choice for a career. It’s a tough one for sure.
He can only work up to 32 hours (as part time) and has to constantly ask to be put wherever they need him in order to come close to that.
I’m grateful that he has a job and is not just another kid playing video games in the basement mooching off of his parents.
He’s not old enough to be a driver (19 this month) you have to be 21.
I hope he doesn’t get seriously hurt if he decides to stick with it.
He took a job unloading trucks with UPS last fall.
It is a hard job. Half the group hired on were gone by the first shift break. Within a week there were 4 people left out of the 36 they hired.
They were only allowed 10 minute breaks for part time shifts (5 hours).
They started at 3-4 AM normally, but once they hit the beginning of December and the holiday season he was going in at 12 AM and working 12 hour shifts and only given 2 more 10 minute breaks.
He was doing well during the holidays with the OT pay.
He came home with stories of over weight boxes falling on him when he opened up trucks all the time. Other workers treated him like dirt (a mild description). He strained his back once already as they are often left to move overweight boxes themselves regardless of what the “rules” say.
The management attitude is one of “get it done or leave”.
He is a hard worker, survived the holiday season and they offered to keep him on.
He had to start over from scratch as a new permanent employee.
He joined the union and started paying his dues.
Within a month he noticed his pay had been cut by over a dollar an hour and he was essentially making minimum wage with no OT possible.
They’re supposed to vote on the proposed changes in early August. I think they deserve to be paid and treated better.
I was hoping this job would be a lesson for him in “reality” and he would choose to start taking some classes part time.
A lot of people comment about how working for UPS can be a good choice for a career. It’s a tough one for sure.
He can only work up to 32 hours (as part time) and has to constantly ask to be put wherever they need him in order to come close to that.
I’m grateful that he has a job and is not just another kid playing video games in the basement mooching off of his parents.
He’s not old enough to be a driver (19 this month) you have to be 21.
I hope he doesn’t get seriously hurt if he decides to stick with it.
As much as is to be admired from your sons example, please tell him that overdoing will make him forgettable in the end with no real prize. I do admire a hard worker though. It was just last night that I spoke to my oldest son telling him, "Let neither your successes or failures ever be due to a lack of effort."
Hell it only took one semester to decide that college was not the place for me. Yah, I got lucky and stood in the right line, getting a job with Ma Bell. It couldn't have worked out better as they paid for college courses that I was actually interested in.
This was a choice he made after his “gap year”.
He had an aversion to academics and classroom study (not that he wasn’t capable of it) and he took the path of a technical high school where he was in a precision machining program.
He had been in a work/study apprenticeship program since his junior year.
His first placement had him in a dump of an eyelet shop in front of a grinder all day with no attempts to mentor him. It came to an inevitable end.
His second placement got him into a hi-tech CNC environment with state of the art facilities…but they essentially threw him in the deep end. That carried him through his summer after graduation…but ended with both him and his employer unhappy.
He took a few months off and then started with UPS.
He is attending the “School of hard knocks”.
He had an aversion to academics and classroom study (not that he wasn’t capable of it) and he took the path of a technical high school where he was in a precision machining program.
He had been in a work/study apprenticeship program since his junior year.
His first placement had him in a dump of an eyelet shop in front of a grinder all day with no attempts to mentor him. It came to an inevitable end.
His second placement got him into a hi-tech CNC environment with state of the art facilities…but they essentially threw him in the deep end. That carried him through his summer after graduation…but ended with both him and his employer unhappy.
He took a few months off and then started with UPS.
He is attending the “School of hard knocks”.
I just have to commend the idea of getting to go to a school where such a thing as machining was even available. Thank God for Jr. High and high school woodshop! I have never made more use of any learned ability in all my years.
He will find his place with the ability that he has learned. I sure worked a lot of jobs that absolutely no one else wanted to do.
He will find his place with the ability that he has learned. I sure worked a lot of jobs that absolutely no one else wanted to do.
Ha I'm one of those guys who got hired at a postal service and quit within the first week. Worst job ever, terrible pay, abysmal work hours. Terrible ******** of delivery drives. I had a driver yell at and insult me for not knowing where things went in his truck after a day of work, nope'd right out there at that moment.
I don't think I'd be who am I without that experience.
I don't think I'd be who am I without that experience.
They never were successful in merging the operations of Roadway or USF into the YELL system. 30,000 people out of a job:
"Yellow, one of the oldest and biggest U.S. trucking businesses, shut down on Sunday, wrecked by a string of mergers that left it saddled with debt and stalled by a standoff with the Teamsters union."
"Yellow, one of the oldest and biggest U.S. trucking businesses, shut down on Sunday, wrecked by a string of mergers that left it saddled with debt and stalled by a standoff with the Teamsters union."
One of my suitemates in college worked nights at UPS. They liked him so much they helped pay his way through law school. He worked for them for decades afterward. This was back when they were a private company.
One of the local families here in NEOH was from Ireland, where the great-grandfather had been a stable hand. His first job in the US was working for the Cleveland Police Department caring for the horses, next purchasing the horses, next purchasing whatever the horses ate necessitating that he buy a horse-drawn wagon...became one of the largest truck-load carriers in the US and there is a statue in his honor.
One of the local families here in NEOH was from Ireland, where the great-grandfather had been a stable hand. His first job in the US was working for the Cleveland Police Department caring for the horses, next purchasing the horses, next purchasing whatever the horses ate necessitating that he buy a horse-drawn wagon...became one of the largest truck-load carriers in the US and there is a statue in his honor.
From what I've read, it was the debt that put them into BK. Private equity is probably what caused this, not wages. Private equity loves to do these mega deals where they get a mega payoff using crushing debt to finance the transaction.
Yellow's equity value was low as a result of a prior debt for equity restructuring, not because the company was owned by a PE firm. YELL funded the ROAD and USF acquisitions with debt -- nails number one and two in the coffin. Yellow then received a $700mm loan from the Fed's under some COVID rubric -- this was a mistake -- the money vanished into thin air. YELL never managed to integrate the ROAD and USF acquisitions so they were squeezed by operating inefficiencies and lower "per shipment" revenues. There was no good or easy fix for YELL's problems.
In the US, trucking was de-regulated in the very late 1970's, leading to massively lower shipping costs and the emergence of an entirely new class of operating company, and hitherto unforeseen advances in the engineering of logistics. (Prior to that, if you ran a load from NY to LA, you headed back east empty).
It's a funny thing about a/c -- there are rules in NY and other climes which limit the number of minutes that you can "idle" -- in NYC I think it's 2 minutes. So if you are in line to drop off in the Queens, Brooklyn or Bronx you may have a wait time of an hour or more. The fine in NYC ranges from $350 to $2,000.