Tony’s Express, a 70-year-old trucking company and freight brokerage based in Fontana, CA, just closed their doors on March 28, 2024.
Along with it, the facility in Stockton, California and two satellite locations in Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada.
200 of their employees, including drivers, warehouse, office, and dockworkers lost their jobs within a day without paychecks and paid time off.
Among these laid off employees were 87 drivers and 42 power units. They also had around 10 linehaul drivers, who were owner-operators, which are also out of pay and work.
The CEO of Tony’s Express, John Ohle, just sent a text message on this Thursday, March 28, to his employees that the company was closing its doors that day and could not cover the previous week’s payroll or workers paid time off.
Their medical coverage ended two days later Saturday.
What CEO does this?? Sending out text messages?
His explanation or excuse was that, and I cite “The current market just didn’t support our ability to operate and be a profitable company, and the cost of fuel in California made it very difficult,” Ohle told this to FreightWaves.
He continues with “We were in very serious discussions with two different companies about coming in and partnering or taking over Tony’s, and those fell apart at the very end, and literally, it was a last-minute decision.”
John Ohle also said that he plans to have all the employees paid but could not provide a date for it.
I doubt this will ever happen, but this is just my opinion.
Companies with over 100 employees are required to give a 60-day notice of a planned shutdown, but Ohle did not file a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notification with the California Employment Development Department before closing.
Ohle excuse was that there wasn’t enough time to file a notice because the deals he had in the works to absorb Tony’s Express failed at the last minute.
There were already red flags months ago, before closing, according to some former employees.
They said that they saw that the company was in financial trouble and left after their hours were cut and when the company’s mechanics’ shop and on-site fuel island were closed.
Ohle’s explanation to this was: “We shut down the shop because it was inefficient and we saved money by going through a full lease and maintenance program with Penske, which is a great operation,” he said. “When I took over, I thought I could save the company, that I could pull a team together and save it.”
Four days before the company closed unexpectedly, which was March 24th, former Tony’s Express workers said they received a text message from Ohle informing them that the company would not be running trucks the following day because of a truck insurance issue.
This probably means that they could not pay the insurance premium.
In more text messages on March 25th, Ohle wrote that the company was “still troubleshooting our current insurance issue and require that all employees remain off” the following day, meaning March 26th.
The laid off employees say that “When we received the first text, they believed we were going back to work and that it was an insurance issue that would get fixed.”
One driver said that “It was a shock when I received the final text that the company was closing, and we weren’t getting paid.
We all have mortgages, rent and bills to pay, and now we don’t have medical coverage for our families.”
Office personnel are owed two weeks’ pay because they were salaried employees, while drivers and others are only owed one week’s pay. All this doesn’t matter anymore anyway.
According to a source, months before closing, Ohle switched from direct deposit to issuing paper checks, which for many employees bounced because of insufficient funds.
Some banks even refused to accept a second paper check from the company after their first ones bounced.
Another source said that some company executives, including Ohle, were paying lumper fees on their personal credit cards, instead of adding funds to Comdata to pay for unloading Tony’s trucks at customers’ warehouses.
Ohle bought already a family-owned trucking company, C&M Transportation Inc. of Kansas City, Kansas, in 2002 which closed two years later which he also abruptly shuttered operations after closing the majority of the company’s terminals where around 200 employees lost their jobs. Paychecks also bounced back from this business.
Tony’s Express was founded by Anthony “Tony” Raluy and his brother, George Raluy in 1954 and sold to John Ohle in March 2023.
Founder Tony Raluy, who maintained his CDL until his retirement at 80, which is amazing, died six months after selling the company to Ohle.
One driver, who worked for the company for almost 15 years under the brothers, described Tony Raluy as a hands-on boss.
Raluy was not ashamed to get down and do some work himself as driving the fuel tanker truck around the yard.
He also took time out of his day to talk with his employees and he also knew everyone by their name.
Another employee, a dock worker, says that Raluy took the time to help teach his workers to become truck drivers.
One of these drivers retired from Tony’s Express last year after 46 years working at this company.
One former employee said that Tony Raluy would have never used text messages to tell his employees such important information.
He, Tony, and his brother George, would have done things much differently because they had a lot of respect in this industry after 70 years in Southern California.
Employees were loyal to them because they cared about their employees and not just the business.
It seems that such employers are a relict these days.
