British Truckers Abroad

Truck companies were hit by soaring fuel prices last year. Last week, flatbed carrier Arrow Trucking ceased operations altogether and on Dec. 28, employees were scheduled to file a lawsuit against the Tulsa, Okla., company.

A class-action lawsuit against Arrow Trucking was expected to be filed in federal court Monday. A principal charge: The Tulsa, Okla., flatbed carrier broke federal law by not giving its employees 60 days' notice about its precarious financial state.
Instead, Arrow last week stranded hundreds of its drivers around the country. Many of them found out their employer was shutting down when their company-issued fuel cards wouldn't work. On Tuesday, the company abruptly told its headquarters staff to pack up and go home.

"It was just outrageous conduct, I think, to do it on the eve of Christmas," said Chuck Ercole, an attorney with Klehr Harrison Harvey Branzburg LLP in Philadelphia. "People's paychecks on the 15th bounced."

more here courtesy csmonitor.com

Layoffs are a fact of life in this economy, but there are humane ways to do it. Then there's the Arrow Trucking Arrow Trucking method.
The Tulsa, Okla., trucking company stopped payment on the gas cards of its drivers, leaving some of them stranded Tuesday around the United States, miles from home. No explanation on the website. No one at the company answering phones.

The 200 or so employees at Arrow Trucking's headquarters were told to pack up their belongings and go home Tuesday morning, according to the Tulsa World.

The only acknowledgement was a brief recorded message on the company's main phone number, asking drivers of its Freightliner and Kenworth trucks to turn their rigs in to the nearest dealer and to call a special hotline to arrange for a bus ticket home. Drivers of the company's Navistar trucks were told to call back for more information.

More courtesy ABC News

I saw this somewhere else also.

A lot of their drivers were left proper stuck. There was/is a Facebook group that was providing help to the stranded drivers. Other companies were coordinating lifts home for the stranded drivers on any of their trucks that were 'in the area'. Quite a Christmastide community spirited thing to happen (the 'rescue' that is, not the lay-offs!!).

http://www.facebook.com/SupportArrowTruckers

This was a complete shambles the way the whole thing was handled from the beginning. Some drivers only found out there was a problem when they got to the fuel desk to fill up only to find their fuel cards had been cancelled. Then there was a message sent out on the qualcom (a satelite communications system) that with immediate effect the company had ceased operations.
When drivers were contacting the company by telephone all they could get was a recorded message telling them to take the truck directly to the nearest dealer where thay would be issued with a bus ticket home. The company website had already been pulled too.
What about all the personal gear in the truck? The bus would not allow pets on board! Lots of drivers here travel with pets.
There were reports of drivers stranded in truck stops with no fuel and no money, not even enough fuel to get the truck to a dealer.
There were also reports of drivers selling all the equipment on the truck, straps, tarps, chains, binders etc and even one report of a truck in a Pilot truck stop in Texas with wheels missing.
Desperate times require desperate measures but those actions could be on the drivers report for the rest of their lives ultimately stopping them getting another trucking job.

Just noticed this one today,

A friend of mine worked for a firm here in the UK based out of Leeds and they did something very similar to this about a year ago.
He was stranded in Italy and only found out the firmhad gone tits up when his fuel card was refused.
Tried to contact his planner/traffic office and the office phones had been cut off. Luckily??? he had a personal number for a couple of his fellow drivers here in the uk and found out what had happened by speaking to them.
In the 5 days it took him to get back to the uk he had no contact with anyone from his company.
His truck stayed somewhere in France when it ran out of fuel and his load was left with it, undelivered and no doubt looted, he was lucky and managed to get a lift from another brit coming back into the UK and managed to get most of his gear in with him.
Not good for anyone to be put into that kind of situation, it bad enough when you get laid off while your workng local, but to be 100's/ 1000's mile from home with no way or meens of getting back must be quite worrying to say the least.

can sympathise about companys going down without warning, a family member was delivering in southern ireland in early 80s when he phoned home his wife told him company went bust.
uncle drove into a haulage yard west of dublin sold the outfit he was driving went home and shared the money out among the rest of the drivers ,it was a small firm. .told ex boss/receivers/police .he left it on side of rd when out of fuel.
drivers thought he was a good man for what he did but ultimately bosses did not trust him and he left OTR to drive for local council..