ABF Freight to Work with Teamsters on Collective Bargaining Agreement

Photo: ABF Freight

Less-than-truckload carrier ABF Freight is getting ready to begin negotiations with the Teamsters National Freight Industry Negotiating Committee in December on a new collective bargaining agreement.

ABF and TNFINC will exchange proposals on Dec. 18 and 19, and the negotiations will begin on Jan. 7, 2018. The TNFINC is the negotiating committee of local unions that are affiliated with the Brotherhood of Teamsters. ABF Freight is the largest subsidiary of ArcBest.

The current collective bargaining agreement, known as the ABF National Master Freight Agreement, expires at midnight on March 31, 2018. It covers approximately 8,600 ABF Freight Teamster employees in various locations across the United States, including road drivers, city drivers, dockworkers, mechanics and clerical personnel.

As DC Velocity notes, the last round of contract talks was a tense, eight-month affair that required three one-month extensions; the resulting contract was ratified by only a 52% margin. The publication says "a possible bone of contention will be the relationship between ABF, which remains ArcBest's largest unit, and the parent's nonunion, asset-light logistics business ... Some ABF Teamsters believe that ArcBest, in an effort to reduce costs by taking business away from its unionized unit, routes freight from ABF to its logistics units, in particular Panther Expedited Trucking, an asset-light expedited service provider that ArcBest's forerunner company, Arkansas Best Corp., acquired in 2012."

"We look forward to working with the Teamsters' leadership to reach a new collective bargaining agreement that appropriately reflects the competitive environment in which we operate," said Tim Thorne, ABF Freight president.

Related: Earnings Watch - ArcBest Rises, YRC Plummets, USA Ekes Out Profit

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WEX to Launch Chip-Based Fleet Card in 2019

Photo courtesy of WEX.

WEX, Inc. will begin offering a more secure chip-based payment card to its fleet customers in 2019, and plans to test the new card in 2018, according to the company.

The WEX chip card will come a year ahead of the payment industry's planned liability shift in 2020 to transfer responsibility to merchants, who will need to replace their point-of-sale hardware at the pump to enable the acceptance of chip cards.

The new card will meet the payment industry's EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) standard and will include a microprocessor chip that stores and protects cardholder data in a more secure way than existing cards that use a magnetic stripe.

With the new card, WEX will offer a closed-loop fleet card, meaning the company handles the entire process of the payment chain. WEX offers a host- rather than card-based model of payment card that allows commercial users to manage controls — such as purchase levels, products that can be purchased, and number of transactions per day — without having to issue new cards.

The new card will offer companies "greater flexibility for customizing the data," said Bernie Kavanagh, senior vice president and general manager of North America large fleet and strategic relationships for WEX.

"As a fleet industry innovator, we believe our customers deserve a thoughtfully designed product – not off-the-shelf technology," said Kavanagh. "WEX has designed a premium chip with additional layers of security, which leads current technology and sets a new industry standard."

The chip card will also allow fleet managers to set 14 different prompting options — up from eight on the current card — that asks drivers to input odometer readings, miles per gallon, driver identification numbers, and other data at the pump.

Related: Fuel Card Fraud Is on the Increase

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Business Interests Spur Autonomous Vehicle Policy Moves in Wisconsin

Racine, WI, city officals felt they were "ahead of the curve" on traffic issues, until a business considering locating there asked about autonomous vehicle infrastructure. Photo: Peloton

Is a new trend developing where big business interests are pushing municipalities to develop autonomous vehicle infrastructure?

That seems to be the case in Wisconsin, where the Foxconn Technology Group, a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturing company, has prompted the city of Racine to study the possibility of developing special lanes for autonomous vehicle traffic on Interstate 94, which runs through the city.

According to Racine's Centennial Journal newspaper, members of the Racine City Council reported that Foxconn, which is currently considering building a manufacturing facility in a semi-rural area near the city, is concerned about traffic congestion on the highway. The facility could ultimately employ as many as 13,000 workers, the report said.

The state has already allocated money to widen I-94 to eight lanes in the area, along with other local road improvements, which lead city leaders to believe they were “ahead of the curve” on traffic issues, according to Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, who was quoted in the story. “We were all dumbstruck,” Sheehy added, “when they looked at us and said, ‘So where's the autonomous vehicle lane?'”

As a result of that conversation, the Journal Sentinel reports, Wisconsin transportation planners were asked to consider the possibility. The Department of Transportation is doing just that, a spokesman said Monday.

“Yes, it is something we are looking at,” said Michael Pyritz, spokesman for the department's southeast region.

Pyritz said the process of evaluating and making final decisions on upgrades to I-94 and other roads near the planned Foxconn complex in Mount Pleasant “is a work in progress,” with many options being weighed.

“It's on the table,” he said of dedicated lanes ...Read the rest of this story

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