23 UPS and UPS Freight Drivers Going to U.S. Championships

Twenty-three state champions, including 10 returning state winners, will represent UPS and UPS Freight at the 2009 National Truck Driving and Step Van Driving Championships in Pittsburgh next month.

Together, the 23 UPS drivers have garnered 67 state championships and more than 450 years of accident-free driving.

"These safety-first drivers, a mix of veteran and relative newcomers to the competition, represent the most skilled professionals in the trucking industry,” said Phil Warren, UPS Freight vice president for community affairs. "For UPS and all competitors, the Nationals -- the acknowledged Super Bowl of Safety -- represent a showcase of our industry’s top drivers.”

The veteran UPS contingent is led by returning state champion Ralph Gragg of Charleston, W.Va., who is making his 11th trip to the Nationals, and Dennis Kendrick of Richmond who won his third straight and ninth overall Virginia title this year. Kendrick will compete in the 3-axle competition at the August championships while Gragg will test the nation’s best in the 5-axle.

Returning for the third straight year to the Nationals is UPS feeder driver John Foran, who successfully defended the Vermont four-axle championship he first won in 2007.

Other members of the 2009 team include three UPS feeder drivers who will make their second straight trip to the Nationals. They are David Sharp from Nevada and Troy Turtle and Bill Harvey from Oklahoma.

First-time state winners making their Nationals debut will be UPS drivers Jeff Kalinowski and Bill Raff from Illinois and Ron Seltzer from Texas.

Raff will compete in the 3-axle competition while Kalinowski and Seltzer become the first UPS drivers in the Step Van competition that debuted this year in some 23 state championships.

The 23 UPS drivers advancing to the Nationals come from 14 states and captured team titles in the state championships of four states: South Carolina, Tennessee, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

Four South Carolinians, led by Steve Newsome, will wear the company’s colors in Pittsburgh. Newsome won his fifth state championship this year and was named Grand Champion in the state competition with the highest score among all competitors. Joining Newsome from the state are John Cook, also a five-time winner; John Hummel, a two-time state titleholder, and newcomer James Belcher. All four UPS Freight drivers are based in Gaffney, S.C.

Three UPS Freight drivers from Georgia will carry the company’s colors. Al Churchwell of Marietta will appear in his seventh Nationals and will be joined by Mike Britt of Marietta and Tommy Lasalata of North Atlanta.

Other company drivers earning their tickets to Pittsburgh are Rodney Cosper and Duane Holmes, both from UPS Freight’s Birmingham, Ala., service center; Randy Crews, Lynchburg, Va.; Manny Franco, Phoenix, Ariz.; John Lawrence, Jackson, Tenn.; Paul Savill, Ohio, and Jerry Sheble, Fontana, Calif.

Both the state and national competitions include difficult driving skills, maneuvering tests, equipment inspections and exams covering safety policies and regulations. More than 400 drivers from across the nation will compete in Pittsburgh in nine equipment classes between Aug. 18 and 22.

Families struggle as job losses hit home

3 neighbors, 3 vanishing paychecks

More cars sit idle in the driveways of the ranch-style homes on Bill Eller Drive in La Vergne.

The road ends in a small cul-de-sac, where three families know too well why the cars travel less.

They know because the men in those homes — the house at the end of the street and the ones on either side — fell victim to the struggling economy and lost their jobs.

Shayne Pulley, laid off in March, was first. A month later, neighbor Dan Johnson got a certified letter from his company with the same news. Three weeks ago, it was Garry Lawson who was let go.

"It's symptomatic of what is happening in the whole economy," Pulley, whose house is in the middle, said about his cul-de-sac. "It makes it seem like the more who are out of work, the less I feel like a failure. But I certainly don't wish it to happen to anyone else."

He and his neighbors joined the ranks of the unemployed in Rutherford County, where 9.2 percent of the work force was without a job in April, according to the most recent county numbers from Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Statewide, the numbers, released last week, jumped from 9.9 percent for April to 10.7 percent for May.

Every state and every industry has been affected by the economy, said Bill Fox, economics professor and director of the Center for Business & Economic Research at the University of Tennessee. Full Story.......

Drivers at the YRC facility in Maybrook say the new jobs expected at the facility when the company closed its Pennsylvania facility did not materialize.

Instead, they say, all the jobs were filled by drivers transferred from closed YRC facilities elsewhere.

What's worse, drivers who used to work full-time are getting less work as they compete with other drivers for hours.

YRC announced in January it would cut 309 jobs from its Tannersville, Pa., Roadway Express plant and move about 150 of those jobs to Maybrook, and that about a third would be filled locally. Instead, all the jobs were filled by drivers from other YRC facilities, said driver John Kelder.

"There was not 150 new jobs coming to Maybrook," he said. "That was a play on numbers."

'Guys aren't paying their bills'
Kelder transferred from Maybrook to the Missouri facility last July, but when YRC started making cuts there, he opted to come home. He's one of the lucky ones. With 24 years under his belt, seniority means he's still working full-time. But other guys are down to part-time, and some aren't working at all.

The cut in hours, on top of a 10 percent pay cut union members agreed to in January, has left many workers struggling, Kelder said.

"Guys aren't paying their bills," he said.

YRC did not make a spokesperson available.

Kevin McCaffrey, president of Teamsters Local 707, which represents some of the Maybrook employees, said there was no guarantee the jobs would be filled locally, and that the union contract requires jobs to be offered first to workers displaced at other facilities.

He confirmed that overall hours for workers at the Maybrook facility are "down significantly."

And layoffs may be on the way. About 20 Maybrook workers are already on layoff, and talks were under way Thursday for more possible layoffs, McCaffrey confirmed.

FedEx Agrees to Pay $26.8 Million to Settle Drivers Lawsuit

FedEx Corp. has agreed to pay $26.8 million to settle a California lawsuit over whether some drivers were independent contractors or employees.

The agreement, presented in a hearing Friday, requires court approval.

In 2007, the California Appeals Court affirmed a 2004 district court ruling that about 200 drivers who operated in the state six to 10 years ago were employees and therefore entitled to business-expense reimbursement.