A Fieldwork Profile of Yellow is a 12 chapter book that examines Yellow Freight. This insider look studies a flat plane apparatus, internal dock designs, tools, culture, and directives. Yellow Corporation chose to enter the strange. The company rolled out a new business plan and immediately one of its largest terminals out west became a loser within the Yellow system. This is the story of the destruction of Yellow within its last stages.
Introduction & Final Entry
I'm not new to the experience of watching a corporation fold. Even before I joined the Yellow tribe, I learned that gates can close. People and things can quickly disperse. Time will pass and memories will surely fade.
This book began as mere fragments of a vision. Yellow was already in trouble and I had been taking notes for a while. Then with the introduction of Yellow’s new “roll-out” business plan, the sudden changes to the way we operated were beyond alarming. The company had entered the ridiculous and was choosing to stay there. Some workers here were hip to the LTL game. They knew the Tracy 813 jungle. It was clear that awkward looking pieces were moving into place. Also, uncertainty was all over the terminal. A mood arrived which frequently pulled my memory back to my working days at Consolidated Freightways. CF was an experience that I kept close to the vest while working at Yellow. CF was specific and there were stark contrasts. Also, there was already enough fear all around the barn in Tracy, I didn't need to run my mouth and add to it. But people knew I had been in the industry for awhile, so occasionally when I did get asked I was careful with those discussions. I never forgot how the carpet was pulled out from underneath us while at Consolidated Freightways. And when the whole CF-spin-off-pride-team-charade was over, it was like we had lost our home. However, my working tenure there wasn't all bad, far from it. The Sacramento terminal at CF had a big seniority roster which was filled with adults. Working that dock forced me to grow up quickly. It taught me how to respect the space of others. It also taught me how to identify those workers who were positively contributing. There were a few dud workers to be sure, but CF had a big horde of proven products who were bottom-line contributors, especially on its outbound end. Every time those workers hit the dock the company was in a position to make money off of their labor. Many workers there were intelligent, hardened, reliable, and mature. Some of the finest LTL dockworkers in the 1980's and 1990's came from two LTL giants, P.I.E. & Consolidated Freightways. Both carriers, despite the fact that they had shut their doors, had produced large amounts of premium dock workers, guys who thrived in heavy conditions, and some of those workers were long in years. Despite the history of both carriers, middle management and labor must have been doing something right especially with respect to hiring and training. The sheer number of P.I.E. & CF workhorses didn't lie. This nomadic mix was all over the industry.
CF was something like a 10 year trial run for me. During my 21 years at Yellow/Roadway I frequently found myself looking back to old lessons. All the big fundamentals were already ingrained in me, but I had sharpened a few habits while working at Yellow. Note taking and paying close attention to my work environment took on new meanings, especially during the period when Yellow began its long sputter. Yellow was a melodrama filled with changes of operations, more and more collisions of actors, more and more alterations, and finally a collective work behavior which had become detrimental to the business. If, as an LTL business, too many poorly loaded trailers are being created (especially on the outbound end), then something is not only wrong, but the situation has become dire. The business is in trouble.
Yellow Freight had its own share of adults, and Yellow workers were talking. Despite all of the rhetoric, a work closure was a real prospect. It could arrive quickly and unexpectedly, Warn Act or not. The tumbleweeds could roll and all of the scenery here could soon become mere wisps of smoke. During the first week of the roll-out my gut was telling me there was still some time, but not much.
We had a new business plan, a strange new mix, a grand design, a building contradiction, a paradox, a self-inflicted gash. It was a new Yellow style. So we just tried to fit in. We still followed our computers, and we still ran. Dockworkers were reminded that this newfangled way of doing things was the future at Yellow. We were like a pack of west coast guinea pigs. Soon this business plan would be implemented across the board, and not relegated to a selection of barns. A wave was coming. Yellow was changing. Yellow was trying to keep pace with something, somewhere. It was a new order. It was a new business requirement and we couldn't survive without it. And as we drove towards this new future, everybody had to do their part especially during times when we got behind. Travelers, workers from other parts of the Yellow system, were flown in from other parts of the country so we could get caught up and remain current. Never before in my tenure at 813 had the terminal operated so poorly, the barn was disorderly, it was unfamiliar, and dysfunction was all over its long flat slab of dock. Too many workers operated on a dysfunctional basis, and too many doors were loading up on a dysfunctional basis. The roll-out business plan was like turning on a switch. All of the sudden the barn in Tracy had become a bottom feeder terminal within the Yellow system.
We weren't making beer here. And we weren't pressing ingots. We were picking up freight, and we were delivering freight. And behind the veil of sexy paint was the engine. Yellow had a number of big terminals where vast numbers of trailers were stripped clean and/or stacked full. We were in the high and tight LTL game of making cube, and it was a freight handling requirement that the public couldn't see. Achieving responsible one-and-done cube was the goal. Keeping an eye out for the next terminal had to figure into our thinking especially inside the Yellow satellite-to-consolidation center shipping design. Before the customer ever saw their freight, there were a few more touches. Underneath the hood, maintaining cube quality had been the order year after year. Tracy was far from perfect but we kept the engine running by staying current even during times when our graveyard manpower wasn't full strength. But along came the roll-out, and with it came several new alterations. The actors handling the freight on the outbound end had completely changed. The terminal had been invaded. Work responsibilities had been inverted. The seniority roster had been shaken up and punctured. But the real victim was the freight coming here from our satellite terminals. Those trailers were getting emptied out night after night by a big pack of out-of-house truck drivers. Those workers hit the dock in Tracy and they produced differently. Running cube within outbound load doors was grossly altered. Yellow was quickly and quietly changing. In summary, the outbound loads in Tracy suddenly stunk. The standard at Yellow Terminal 813 had changed. Quality control had virtually disappeared overnight. It was passed off and explained away as the future is here.
We watched it closely and a subset of us weren't buying it. All of this new motion was pure LTL bullshit. The sales pitch was also bullshit. Some of us were far past cynical. But we were good soldiers so we continued to do as we were told. Somehow we would fit in around this new problem while simultaneously trying to adhere to strict freight fundamentals. We were products of experience. We knew our stuff and we knew how to effectively stuff trailers, especially in tandem with one another. We also knew the inherent value of cube and its meaning to the business at hand. But the roll-out blew it all up. Instead of riding our experience, Yellow chose to dummy up the place. There is no other way to describe it. It's like looking at an organization, a department, or a bureau where valuable experience is a must, but instead, somehow a decision is made to go another direction. Experience gets moved aside, sidestepped, knocked down a peg, or is somehow shown the door. It's a move that comes with risks. If a choice is made not to go with real proven experience, especially in high impact areas, then what should the expectations really be? And what will be the actual repercussions? What's really on the horizon if what has been constructed is fundamentally unsound? And if the results are poor, and those results continue to be encouraged without remedy, then the real pressing question becomes: Who the fuck is in charge?
Yellow made its choice. Somewhere people had designed it. Somewhere people had agreed to it. And right out of the gate its shape was utterly grotesque, its mass and momentum nothing more than bad business. It was causing stress. Moreover, this creation was causing stress on our ability to maintain responsible outbound cube. And behind the mask were night time dispatches which brought in work from afar, a trucking pendulum which hit its mark during late night hours. This hustle added up quickly, and it turned a consolidation center out west completely sideways. New problems erupted all over the terminal including our ability to remain current. It was inexcusable! Yet, Yellow Corporation was boasting it like it was some alternative LTL freight methodology.
And what a drive home it was! What a golden future it was! What a beautiful message! What precision! What a blatant tool! Yellow chose to cycle in massive amounts of inexperienced bodies to do the same dummy up cube building bullshit night after night. And by acting so, the corporation sidestepped its own hands-on experience. It was immolation, an LTL contradiction in real time and real space. It was shrugged off as a hunky dory visitation, like it was business as usual. In working reality this massive night time puzzle building endeavor expedited our misfortune. The days at Yellow Freight had to be numbered. By design, the satellite freight, the ichor of the business, continued to be poorly handled and recklessly compromised all the way until the end.
The Yellow sarcophagus was now ready to be occupied. When bankruptcy was declared dockworkers and drivers were talking about getting a piece of the pie. Would there be any table scraps leftover from the Yellow fire-sale? All assets would soon get soaked up. There would be hearings, objections, amendments, claims, confirmations, adjournments, and other maneuverings. As time gets stretched out, everything becomes more and more a lawyer's wet dream. Despite all the stacks of letters that were coming in the mail, all the black and white information, all the legal wrangling, and all of the month by month updates, I had no expectations. I had already experienced something like this at CF. For me, anybody that was involved with the Yellow Bankruptcy didn't have an ounce of credibility. Furthermore, with all the finger pointing that occurred during Yellow's final weeks, and all of the blame that was hurled about in memos, and all of the absenteeism by the parties involved, and all of the shoddy roll-out designs during Yellow's last stages, all of it felt like skulduggery to me. Pardon my English ladies and gentlemen, but when the bankruptcy crowd arrives, reality can be a mother fucker! So why would I expect anything positive coming my way? When trust is gone, it's gone. I know bad treatment when I see it; sometimes it can leave behind much more than just another unemployed worker. It can produce a snarling dog.
When the doors closed at Yellow, my focus changed. It was time to permanently put away my boots. And it was time to start thinking about this project. I had done my homework. Now, it was time to turn it in.
I wasn't excited about it, but I knew eventually this thing had to get done. Procrastination was somehow averted and within a few weeks I began writing some of the easier material. I found a few good writing spaces and kept a personal log in order to stay focused. With a bare bones word processor, I gradually began to move ideas around and as the material expanded I could see the project moving far beyond a multi-layered treatise. A book was emerging. This thing was going to require a spell. It was also going to require a specific plan.
The project had to be kept completely private from start to finish. Even if I could see the value of sharing ideas with others, I couldn’t draw anyone into this while under construction. During edits, much of the venom had to be removed, and details needed to remain deadly accurate. In the end, every chapter had to be cold. I would write the book, build a simple web site around it, fix it free within the internet, then walk away from it.
The problem of length was a haunt that wasn't going away. With old chapters needing refinement, and with new chapters emerging out of nowhere, I had to make a decision. What kind of book length was I really looking at? I was presented with three different choices:
The first choice was obvious. The whole work had to be tight even if it was overly wrought with a tired repetitiveness. It needed to be free of schematics, of more and more dock lay-outs, and all of the flat space materials of design. Without throwing a lasso on it, the book could morph into an unnecessary operating manual, something that would take the work completely off point. Also, I was in no mood to draw on anything I had written previously, whether any of those ideas were applicable or not. I might reference them, but I couldn't draw on them. Yellow Freight was the subject so the book needed to focus on Yellow ground. It had to get wrapped in under two hundred pages with no more than a dozen chapters. I wanted a lean snake of a book.
The second choice had a weird potential. Two chapters could mushroom and get out of control if I wasn't careful. I could see a full range of ideas that could draw me in, then pull me away. The book might take on a different style and settle somewhere in the 300-350 page range. In my mind, this direction didn't seem to work. The project was already rickety.
The third choice was a rock pile of a book. I had plenty of notes to draw upon. The change to door frequency and the generation of new flat planes over and over again suggested something. Every door change created a new card. Every poor decision within this so-called business plan was something new to consider. Every new card was packed with meaning, especially if the cards were erroneous. One big west coast facility was throwing paint against the wall and calling it a business plan. Some workers believed (believed mind you) that the alterations were so bad that they had to be calculated. Yellow not only invited a business ogre, but it had created one. And there was no shortage of material to examine. However, I had my own ogre of a project to consider. I could see the development of a 500 or 600 page lumbering giant. This direction was tugging on me a little, but not a lot.
By September 2024 the book was done. It was also time to close my log. I remember leaning back on Labor Day and telling myself that it could stand as is. So, a hard copy was printed out and notarized. There have been some revisions and edits to it since then, but not much.
Help was clearly needed on many levels, but the mission was to privately create it then place it somewhere within the internet. There was no desire to market it. Though I had noted it on a few boards and sent it as an attachment within a few waves of emails (mostly to academia), as a 12 chapter collection I consider it an underground work, an obscure book with purpose. I can let it ferment. Soon it won’t pull on me at all. My only obligation as author is to keep the final version of the work fixed and available. A site building company will be paid annually to keep it afloat and to ensure that the whole work remains free, undiluted, and easy to access for years to come. I'll always stand by it.
Time to respectfully clock out,
Daniel A. Pino
Author and former employee of Yellow Freight