Posted on 01/06/2010 9:43:20 AM PST by SoonerStorm09
A week before Christmas — four days before Arrow Trucking Co. closed its doors and stranded hundreds of drivers and their freight at truck stops and rest areas around the country — Arrow driver John Eischens called his mother.
He asked her for a bus ticket home.
"Arrow bounced John's last two paychecks and cut off all advances in the week prior to the shutdown," said Marie AuBuchon, a driver for KLLM Transport Services of Jackson, Miss., and a member of a loose-knit national effort to return stranded Arrow drivers to their homes.
"John only worked for them for about a month. He would have had no money for food or shelter."
Eischens' mother is old school, AuBuchon said. She convinced her son that Arrow would make good on the money it owed him, that you owe the company loyalty and shouldn't abandon it during tough times, AuBuchon said.
Nineteen days after Eischens called his mother, and 15 days after Arrow's lenders canceled company fuel credit cards, the Arrow driver is missing, said AuBuchon and volunteers at "Support for Stranded Arrow Trucking Drivers."
The organization can be reached on the Internet or through Facebook links.
On Tuesday, authorities found Eischens' truck at a truck stop in Montana, AuBuchon said.
(Excerpt) Read more at tulsaworld.com ...
Hopefully he’s hitch-hiking his way back home and not in any distress...
It’s a bad time of the year to be stuck out there like that... I hope he’s okay and just hanging out somewhere, but you would have thought he would have called someone.
Maybe he found a pretty girl somewhere and he’s taking a vacation... :-)
[... now... I don’t know if he’s married or not... so I was “just saying”... ]
Montana and a Christmas blizzard from the Dakotas to Cape Cod is not a good time to be without shelter hitching.
I pray he is ok.
I work for a company that uses Arrow trucking for our shipments. We had some large transformers being shipped from the plant to the job site, that are now missing since Arrow shut their doors.
Poor guy. I hope he’s OK. The CEO of that company ought to be tarred and feathered! Did you see the picture of him that he had on his Facebook page? What a smug jerk. He looked like he was posing for the cover of GQ magazine.
His dad started and built the company, and when he died his son took over as CEO and has destroyed it. He was driving his Maserati and some other expensive car to work while his employees were missing paychecks. If some real harm has come to this missing driver, I hope they charge the CEO with a crime. This makes me furious!
I’m praying for his safe return home!
...yeah, but what about the freight on board?...this guy was driving a flat bed...others may have been hauling trailers full of whiskey/cigarettes/beef/TVs ect...high theft stuff.
If you know more or less where your shipment was when the driver was told to turn in his rig, you might put out the word at local truck stops and dealers in the area offering a reward for info on the location of your trailer. Someone will know where it is, and will be able to get word back so you can get another tractor (and maybe trailer) to finish the delivery.
One positive aspect of the story posted at the link is that more than 100 Arrow trucks and several hundred trailers remain unaccounted for. Sounds like there are a lot of smart truck drivers out there who aren't going to let themselves get jerked around by the company.
I’m no legal expert — especially not on freight transportation matters. Which entity is legally responsible for a load in your situation: the shipper or the carrier?
The shippers are third parties and shouldn’t be getting shafted. Arrow management should have seen this coming and acted more responsibly. I suspect the company is closely held and the owners and managers are the same people.
Why call his mother back when she wouldn't help before? Btw, what kind of nut wouldn't help their son? I would have told him to make sure Arrow won't help and call me back. I'll send a bus ticket if they strand you. Geeze!
It just depends on the shipping terms that were agreed upon at the time of the order. Sometimes it is FOB jobsite and sometimes it is FOB shipping point. If it was shipping point, then the customer is responsible for the equipment the time it leaves our dock. If it is FOB jobsite, we are responsible for it until it reaches its final destination. I’m not sure what the shipping terms were on these transformers. I know that we were able to recover one of them. The one we recovered was impounded. The others are no where to be found.We had the driver’s cell phone number, but since their phones are now shut off, we can’t get in touch with him.
Okay..., in that case, I’m going for the “new girlfriend angle”... :-)
He’s probably hitching and I hope he’s ok. My Dad drove truck and now my brother does but they never worked for Arrow. Thank goodness!
Maybe he was able to do a private contract, and is off enjoying what he made. Just saying... Have flatbed; will haul.
I agree 100%. But they're not getting shafted by the drivers -- they're getting shafted by Arrow.
If I'm a driver, my primary obligation is to my company -- not their customers. If my company screws me and I think my only way to recover what is owed to me is to hold the company's assets and loads "hostage," then so be it. I find this kind of "can-do" spirit sort of refreshing, in fact.
Where are the Federal regulators when you need them?
Is this company in Chapter 11?
There must be assets in trucks and contracts....enough to liquidate and pay salaries.
Where is the Union??? They have funds!!!
What a disgrace!!!
The problem with that approach is that you end up on the wrong end of criminal liability. “He who sells what isn’t his’n, must buy it back or go to prison.”
In the U.S. wage claims are privileged in a bankruptcy vs. other unsecured creditors (assuming the company has any assets) so the drivers may get something, eventually.
The situation sucks, but taking it out on the shippers sucks, too. The drivers are clearly in a no win situation, but that happens to everyone once in a while. It would be a bigger mistake to compound the situation by getting a criminal record. Especially considering that a record for stealing freight would probably bar you from employment with any other trucking company if their insurers have anything to say about it.
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