Profile For Moe

Thank you so much to everyone for the kind words, thoughts and prayers. I wanted to let you all know that I have relocated safely to FL (mom died while I was enroute here with the U-haul loaded with my earthly goods) and I am now (finally) able to begin the process of handling her affairs. Marten Transport has changed my planned leave to bereavement/FMLA and is giving me more time to deal with all of this.

Thank you again. I will keep in touch. Just wanted to pop in briefly and update everyone.

Be safe out there while on the roads please.

Moe

Hi all,

I just wanted to give the update, so many of you have given warm wishes, kind thoughts and prayers. My mom Capt. Linda L Reinhardt (USAF Ret) lost her battle with the terminal illness she fought against since 2019 yesterday at 1145 AM EDT. I got the news while driving the U-haul through Nebraska. I am currently in Clarkesville, TN spending the night and have to get the Uhaul (safely) to FL then onward to PA to take care of her final arrangements.

Just thought I would pass that on to my brothers and sisters on the road. Thanks so much for the prayers and thoughts over the years.

Moe

Start applying for new jobs immeidately. While you are doing that, you will be making arrangments to return the truck to them. I would highly reccomend saving any sort of text messages (emails, Qualcomm dispatches, texts etc) ONTO YOUR personal phone, take a screen shot of it (camera picture) of the texts line by line.

If the company is giving you the run around about getting home - find a good labor attorney who is familiar with the trucking industry (preferrably) and have them start making calls (if you can afford their services). As much as it sucks, as others have said you can't abandon the truck and load, that could open you up to liability. I would definitly be parking that mofo until all of this got sorted out or I was at least guaranteed a load home and I saw said load home on my qualcomm.

As for missed paychecks contact your state's BOLI (Beauru of Labor and Industry- at least that is what my state calls it, yours could very well be unemployment or some other labor board). the BOLI can go after them for missed wages, I had to do that against an employer once- it only took one call from someone at the BOLI to get me my money. Bosses don't like messing around with that sort of thing.

As others have also mentioned, I wouldn't be sticking around with nor tolerating that gig. I give bosses/employers a 1 week grace for a bounced payment (file that under stuff happens) after the second week or the second occurence- BUBI.

Wish you the best of luck in your journey.

Wanting to know what the truckers rights are as far as a new company that I started for and this is the second week no paycheck and the first check they tried to deposit bounced for non sufficient funds. I want to quit but I do t want to just abandon my truck or load but I am now pretty much working for Free. Help!!!

Thanks again for the well wishes. I am just working on packing right now. I have forgotten how much work it is to pack a house as I have not done it in a long time. So I am sorting through what comes with me and what does not. That in and of itself is WORK.

I had mom's long term care plan meeting today via tele conference (Zoom on laptop) and she is hanging in there. We have her stabilized since her pneumonia but her lung capacity is garbage ( to be honest and hopefully not in too much distaste). To put in perspective, the human lung runs from your upper chest (the upper breast for a woman) down to just below your ribcage. The doctors informed me she is using only upper third of her lung which is the top of her breast bone down to upper lower part of her chest. Everything below that is dead scar tissue. She has pulminary fibrosis. So she is actually breathing on about 45 percent of her capacity.

That is all the update I have for now. I will keep in touch.

Be safe out there everyone please, no freight is worth our lives.

Moe

Nothing conspiratorial about it PJ, I think you are right on GREED made everyone in this situation act stupid - both the trucking company and the unions. I will reserve my thoughts about both in order to keep it brief, but the GREED on both sides was tremendous and it truly did not have to end like this had people come to their senses years ago and tried to right the ship's direction. That did not happen and we are where we are.

Conspiratorial would be believing that this was intentionally done to crash the economy and bring about a NWO or unified world currency etc - met alot of those types out there. Im not sure if I believe that 100 percent or not.

Like Davy mentioned though, I too wonder what the sudden infusion of 30K qualified drivers (assuming they all are qualified - no wrecks etc) will have on the OTR/Regional market. Freight is already tight enough and I fear we may have hiring freezes soon if things do not pick up.

Any rate- I hope everyone is enjoying the day out there as best you can and above all else be safe!

Moe

Reading all that press release is very sad. When everything out there in the public domain is considered I think there is much more to the whole story.

I hate to sound like a conspircy theorist but it looks like wall street, teamsters and our gov’t may very well have conspired to take advantage of yellow’s mismangement errors sime to make very large amounts of money, none of which were the 30k employee’s.

Thank you all for kind words, prayers and well wishes. It is much appreciated!

Moe

“The debtor is slave to the lender”…….period.

It’s always annoyed me how many supposed “business leaders” , “educated economists” and “gurus” seem to dismiss this fact or act all surprised when things blow up (financially speaking) in their faces. The sad part is that innocent people often get wrecked by careless decision making. Yellow/YRC has had it coming for years (not the drivers).

Back when I was in CDL school, we had a YRC rep come talk to us. You know what pushed all of us away from even considering applying with them? They didn’t provide enough lunch to feed all 30 or so of us and the rep had to call his boss asking for more $$ to get more pizza 🍕.

I smelled their crock a mile away, glad I stayed away.

Rhino, I’m glad you got on your feet.

Yellow should be a cautionary tale for all of us about living and operating within our means.

I thought a deal had been cut with Yellow? To prevent this? I must be wrong then, thought I read that somewhere.

It's an interesting situation and I'm following along learning a lot.

Apollo is the lender Yellow owes most. They have agreed to fund the shutdown. That's the lending I was reading up on. It wasn't another bail out, it was them moving to the front of the line.

That will make them the "debtor in possession", putting them at the very top of the list to get paid after the liquidation is compete.

You also have the stock skyrocketing because MFN is buying up a bunch of it. Last I saw they owned 48% of Yellow stock.

Buying stock makes MFN an owner of the company. MFN must believe that there are more assets than liabilities and Yellow will have a lot of cash after paying all the debt.

Then there's Uncle Sam. The 700 million from the government is secured by stock not assests. That means when/if Yellow files for bankruptcy the government gets nothing.

If the liquidation brings in more money than the debts owed, Yellow will not qualify for bankruptcy protection. Apollo and MFN are in the money business. They have no interest in running a trucking company or using the laid off work force.

I thought a deal had been cut with Yellow? To prevent this? I must be wrong then, thought I read that somewhere. This is an awful situation that affects over 33,000 people, glad you found a job so fast.

As Bobcat stated, many won’t be so lucky.

God is good man, God is good

Hi all,

I realize I have not posted on the forum for sometime. Despite the freight slow down nationwide, I have been blessed to work for Marten Transport whom has kept me busy with plenty to haul despite the current economic impacts/setbacks. For any of you new members my nickname and my call sign OTR is Moe. The resources online here at TT helped me many years ago while I was looking into trucking, dealing with the challenges of getting into the industry , my CDL training (and five times failing the test) as well as navigating my first employment within the business. I thought I would just pop back in now that I have a minute and check in again.

As the title of the subject says -I need to come off the road for a bit and have already returned my truck back to Marten. Reasons are threefold -

First and most important- I had to get mom placed into end of life care (hospice) while I was OTR in Laredo TX (was running freight to and from our transfer station vendors there) when I got the call that she had almost died due to contracting pneumonia from a sinus infection. She did pull through but the doctors informed us that she cannot live on her own anymore (too weak to manage daily living). So in addition to the hospice stuff , we now are sorting out getting her house ready to sell etc. God is good though, the VA will pay her end of life care expenses 100% (we got that news on Weds, this week!). It was a hard decision to make but being her PoA (power of attorney) it is/was my responsibility to make the hard call. Won't lie, I was in tears that night, hurt like hell (pardon me)

Second- I had already been planning to move into my brother's house in Florida as he and family desired me to be closer around. That said, I do have a life in Oregon that I am trying to wrap up and pack while dealing with mom's issues. I had planned to clean the truck off in mid August for a brief LoA to move, but mom's issues have accelerated and lengthened the timeline a bit.

Third - I have been running almost non stop for about three years straight and I also need to tend to myself for a while - running is great , but we need to know when its time to come to a season of rest. Trucking will always be there - no matter who is in office , world events or whatever, as long as I have my CDL -I can come back to it.

Good thing is I am working with Marten on this and they have told me we can and will work through it and come back when the time is right- so I still have my job waiting for me when I get things settled and resolved.

I just wanted to share what is going on and just ask for prayer and good wishes. I want to also share how grateful I am for some of the tuff love I got here in the beginning because listening did pay off. I have a great career with a great carrier and also the great paychecks enabled me to save up a substantial sum in order to cover my expenses fully while I am out (the moving, rent in OR and FL , airline tickets , bills etc). I am not stressed because I have 2 things - a God who is in control and a great career which enables me to handle business and not have me and my loved ones stressed out because I am unable to pay for things (been there and its horrible).

The last couple of weeks really did slam home to me what is important in life - family and loved ones. Trucking just allows us to provide better for them and to be there financially for them when it REALLY counts (such as the time I am going through now). Just remember that whomever reads this focus on what matters- we never know how much longer we or those around us have.

God bless y'all -stay safe.

Moe

I’ve used both Rand and Garmin. I had my rand for about three years before it started having hardware/battery issues and would shut down on me. I just got the Garmin dezl 710 at flying j the other day got a $50 off coupon and spent some of my points and po ied up for the rest. So far so good with Garmin. There are plusses and minuses to both.

In fact the only reason why I got the Garmin was the money I saved, had the same deal been for Rand, I would have picked up the overdrive 8 pro.

Any of the RM or Garmins should serve you well for trucking. Depends upon your budget, when I got into trucking my budget was around $300, I picked up the RM TND 550 for about that amount. I found the ability to PIN specific GPS corridnates on the map (IE:Truck entrances) very useful in order to avoid the wonky point to point nature of the GPS. (Hint Garmin will let you do the exact same thing!). IMHO if you have the option to pick one up and fiddle with it a bit to see what you like, I would do that then you can get an idea of what suites your style better.

IMHO - it’s RM or Garmin. Tom Tom seems cheaply made and I sure as cough cough ain’t trusting my cellphone for Truck routing even with Hammer or TP. I’m often in areas of no cellular signal, so having a pure dedicated GPS which can show me the route back to civilization is a must!

It is also important that you update your maps and operating system (and this is doubly so with the RM products) from a stable and strong wifi. I typically will take my GPS home and search for/install updates on the day before I am set to leave in order to ensure I have the latest update.

You can’t go wrong with a RM or a Garmin the money is worth it. As was stated before a gps doesn’t replace a proper trip plan, route and weather check and verifying directions to the receiver.