I have a good friend who started with Roadway in 1966. I'm a Gen-Xer, and got my CDL in 2000. He's been decent enough to share the rich history of trucking THEN with me, and never held me in any kind of contempt as a steering wheel holder. He's a superb ho scale model builder, and I have many of his creations. I've been lucky enough to have a few guys like him from that era as friends.
My father retired from Roadway Express and collected Roadway Minatures from toy firm by the name PIE. I still have his collection and willing to part with some of the trucks, including the famous "Circus" trailer used during one of the anniersaries.
I was employed in Operations as a Roadway Express Dock Supervisor and Truck Dispatcher at one of their small trucking terminals during the early 1970’s, which I was successful at and enjoyed working there. My goal was to start in this employment operations position to learn the trucking industry, Roadway procedures, and prove myself, and seek a sales position with them, as my career calling. While I was in their Operations Supervisor Position, I had great Terminal Manager, a team of Teamster dock workers and drivers that worked on my crew, that I was responsible for. They are a greatly respected Company, a Trucking Industry Leader, and successful innovator. I learned a lot while I worked there, including their Rexan System, as a young man. I kept trying to pursue obtaining a sales position with Roadway, as I thought that was my career calling, but was refused by the Company. Subsequently, I resigned from them to start as a Sales Representative for a large Chemical Company instead, which I succeeded with. If Roadway had offered me a sales position, I would have been a Roadway Employee lifer with them. Thank you Roadway Express for the opportunity to allow me to work for your fine Company in those yesteryears of my early working life.
Every American should watch this! Why? Because without companies like you we would not eat, or anything else for that matter. For my part a big Thank You.
I was at BIG R 27 years retired in 2000 and there isn't a doubt in my mind that BIG R was the best freight company to work for. Do your job, get paid well and no bull shit from the company. I worked out of 430 White Pine Tennessee.
I worked for Trans Con , Consolidated Freightways ( CF ) Northwest NW, but I remember they last of the Teamsters Golden years, when you would see all or close to it of Union carriers on the road. System 99, Willig, Transcon. PIE, Milne Truck Lines, only ABF Arkansas Best Freight is the last of the Mohicans.
My father in law drove for Eastern Freightways out of Uniontown Pennsylvania. He started driving a new Brockway with factory sleeper and a new Fruehauf stainless steel trailer. We still have his picture hanging up in our home.
Good history lesson. Retired 30 years service in 2000 from Columbus, Ohio. . Best decision I could have made in 1970 to drive for Roadway. Lots of good memories. Drivers worked together with the company and dressed professional furnished by the company if you drove safely. When drivers had a problem with dispatchers or company personnel and Galen Roush showed up , heads would turn. He took care of the problem. Thanks for the video.
Worked in a Roadway garage in 1989. While there, found that the owner at the largest privately owned freight carrier in the world was a former Roadway driver; R.Y. Sharpe, Pilot Freight.
I worked for Roadway R72 / 242 in Columbus Ohio from 4/29/92 to 1/13/99 I miss the people I worked with. Great people. The bosses on the other hand I do not miss. They were on you all the time. It was just too much stress all the time. I think when you work at a company everybody knows who the bosses are but when you work at a company and they’re always showing you who the bosses are. It makes for a hard place to work.
My Dad drove for Roadway back in the early 1950s. Switched to Yellow in the early 1960s and also drove for Swift.. Dad always said you needed a sixth sense in order to drive a truck. Always had to "know" what the other (dummies) people were thinking and what they might do next. He taught me well. Started driving in 1974 and retired in 2014 with a accident free record.
Sounds like your dad was a smart man. I’ve trucked all my life and that’s been my philosophy. If you plan for dummies, then you’re way ahead of the game. Matter of fact, when my daughters started driving, that’s a lesson I always preached to them in their cars, always expect someone to do something stupid.
I viewed this about 2-3 years ago and will probably enjoy watching it again in another 3 years if fortunate to still be here. History is all over these old films, beginning to end. It's great that technology has enabled such access to so much, as well as film restoration capabilities. Only, it's a bummer sometimes, to come to the realization of how old I'm getting when I see the 'old videos' have things shown in them that were brand new to me at one time.
I worked for Roadway for a short time. It was a good experience. At the time I was also working for another Teamster organized company which hired me on regular before Roadway could.
Walt Stovall yes they may of been the slowest trucks on the road but the drivers had more fun than most of the other truckers and had plenty of time to sweet talk the ladies in the truck stops
Walt Stovall Not always... Back in the day RoadWay trucks would pass a Greyhound bus I know some folks don't remember it. But the old man said if they pass is on the road today they will have our freight tomorrow... and RoadWay trucks ran. They only got slow when when the old man died and the price of fuel went up..
Galen Roush bought a mower from my dad in the 1940's for his home in Peninsula, Ohio. I made at least one service call to his residence and met Galen. His house was anything but special. His wife came into our shop in Cuyahoga Falls on occasion to buy parts so Galen could fix his mower. My guess is and I've heard it from numerous others that Galen, although a multi-millionaire was very cheap.A guy that ran probably the only gas station in Peninsula at the time told me about Galen coming in to buy gas and wanting to trade the Goodyear Double Eagle tires that were on his new Lincoln automobile on recapped tires and cash back. We both laughed about that.
I wonder if that was a second home for Mr.&Mrs. Roush in the 1940!s In Peninsula. I know by the early 60’s they lived on Major Rd. in an old farmhouse and there was a barn on their property. I’m pretty sure at least some of their children went to Buchtel High School in the 1950’s when the Roush family lived in west Akron, on Storer Ave. I believe.
Over the past 25 years I've heard a lot of stories about them. Drivers never had a day off because they were always on call so they couldn't go far from home. Back in the 60s my uncle worked at a furniture place and Jackie Gleason order a special table from PA, it was shipped by big R to CA but they lost it or broke it and they had make another one. I think the most famous blunder they made was when they lost the Oscar trophies..
My father retired in 77 from Cincinnati. I can remember when he drove sleeper teams, I was surprised they made no mention of the sleeper teams they used to keep the Freight moving.
I ran the road for Yellow Freight for fifteen years and when they bought Roadway I got laid off the day before Christmas Eve so when I turned 65 I grabbed my pension and my SS. Best job I ever had
I got laid off a couple of times. When the companies integrated operations, I went from 14 back down to 33. When I reached 63 1/2 I retired. I think I'd climbed back up to 19.
so what yr,. did yellow buy roadway.....? & for how much then...... is yellow still around on the rds,. as of 1/2019..... any one know.......???? & how's yellow doing still or did they buy any more trucking company's or did they get bought out yet.... if yes to whom... & what yr,. ... & how much .....??
Very interesting and informative. I was raised in a small Arizona Town and we had one local driver and a medium size truck in town and I would see him every day on his deliveries and he knew everyone in town and drank coffee with us when he could. Good show~!!!
Jimmy B, thanks for this great video. It brought back some fun memories. My first 8 years were with Roadway. That experience propelled me through the next 32 years. Still standing.
In my wearhouse, receivers moan at the morning meeting when assignments are given out and they get a Roadway to unload...the pallets are almost always damaged as with alot of the product. The Vans are filty and show adnormal wear and tear. As I drive down the highway and see a Roadway truck, nine out of ten times that truck looks like it is not maintained with any care or pride whatsoever! In ending, Roadway might have been a giant in the industry back in the day...but is only a sad represented remonance of the past today. Great video all the same! Really shows the growth and transition of the industry!
When I started driving in 1980 roadway was simply known as big R. There was other successful ltl trucking companies then but roadway was king. All those other companies have either gone out of business or been absorbed into other companies. I’m still driving but it’s been a long, long time since I’ve heard anyone call out for Big R on the two-way.
Ahhhhhh Roadway. My earliest memories of Roadway are riding with my dad in the 70s and 80s. He was an owner operator leased to a local company as I am today. Back then, if memory serves, they were running C series Ford tractors and the saying was "Roadway, always on the road and always in the way". Roadway lives on today as part of YRC Companies. Personally, I could NEVER do LTL like those guys do!
I remember the Ford C Cabs one used to pass by the house 3 days a week to drop off paper stock to a dairy down the street from my parents home when I was kid in the 1980's
I liked hearing about the history...I like that 2 brothers got it started and continued, even though they had a different way of operating the company. I think that deregulation was meant to help the trucking industry, but it backfired! It hasn’t been the same since! Thanks for sharing! 🥰
Similar things happened with airline deregulation. The excitement and romance of air travel quickly disappeared when so many of the start-up carriers began packing people into those aluminum tubes like the New York subway at rush hour.
@@douglasjackson5007 🇺🇸 Yeah, I can imagine that. I was able to ride the Ford Tri motor…what a thrill to look at & ride! I appreciate the companies that have stuck with it all these years. 🥰❄️✌️
And Yes Yellow Freight System is one of the biggest and best companies to work for and with I drove for Yellow for over 28 years and retired December 31,2004 and I sure miss working with some of the best Truckers in the nation
I bet no one at Roadway remembers John McCall... He was a strong reason in getting Roadway into the textile mills in the South...he retired as a salesman at Roadway...
Thank God for yellow freight buying out roadway or they with be out of business the worst thing yellow freight did they should let roadway go out of business
Every so often I still see one of those 1950s era Roadway trailers being hauled on the road. No idea if it has a load in it or why it's on the road, but it's very interesting to see such an old trailer rolling down the road.
I live by the Chicago heights terminal and have seen a lot of different Roadway power. The Detroit powered tractors bring back loud memories. US RT 30 through my small state line town was narrow and busy always lots of Roadway doubles
I worked for Roadway Express at the Fort Collins, Co. terminal 893. It was a sad day when they sold out to Yellow. Yellow quit the Teamsters Pension Plan and I lost out of being able to take a full early retirement ( eighty and out) by 2 years.
Hello very interesting video of roadway express lot of history about roadway express over 75 years of real service to customer's one real trucking company still in business as of the year 2022👍
The video mentioned the primitive roads of the 1920's, but made no mention of the Interstate Highway System started in the 1950's. The government designed and financed interstates were the greatest thing that ever happened to the long haul trucking business, and therefore almost every business in the country as well. Of course, after a while it was decided by many that government was the problem and our infrastructure was allowed to age and crumble. So sad.
I ran all "Lower 48 States" for Global Van Lines in 1979 & 1980 and routinely stopped at truck stops along the way. There was nothing quite like waking up early in the morning when some guy with an air-starter would light that sucker off in the next parking space. Nobody needed an alarm clock if one of those was nearby. That was no place for a driver with a heart condition!!!! The coffee in the restaurant was for steadying your nerves, you didn't need any help waking up. ;^)
I fell in love with air starters back in the early 90's. I was roughly 5 yrs old when I first seen "Maximum Overdrive". Alot of Brockways & Autocars, lol. Little did I know International Transtar II, Mack Ultraliners, & RS-600/700 Macks were already going the way of the dinosaurs.
I was a mechanic at roadway. I never once seen one of those air starters fail. And if it ran out of air you could hook a gland hand from another tractor to it and refill the tank. only required one battery to operate the rig. We re powered many of the old WCL tractors with series 60 engines. This truck line was very well ran, it really surprises me they were absorbed. Now the freight companies invest in equipment instead of people.
Just think what the industry would be like today if you could bring them drivers and employees into the current time with their work ethic and access to the advanced technology I bet things would be a lot better than they are now...
We would need Big R to be owned by the employee's instead of the jackasses that were supervision after the Rouches passed the company along to Yellow. After that Big R got taken down by Yellow. I've been retired since 2001 and am totally disabled so no way I can go back to work and facing the prospect of losing my paltry pension in a few years. Yellow stole pension funds that should have been paid to the retiree's and future retiree's by begging the union to let them stop paying into the fund plan's. Guys I've been able to talk with who were still working said things got worse after Yellow took over. And deregulation was only the start of the down fall of Roadway and all the other, now deceased union companies. So not only did the government screw the pooch, so did the union and YRC. And now the Mexican and more so the non-union Canadian companies take over trucking with NAFTA. At least with the union's, drivers had a better income and benefits, although I have to say some union's like the AFL-CIO went overboard in hourly pay. People working on auto lines are getting way too much per hour for what they do. But that's another story...
They wouldn't stick around very long. They'd find better pay, benefits, and working conditions somewhere else. I was a long-haul tanker-yanker and virtually lived in my tractor. Remember seeing a lot of good deals on the bulletin boards in the company's O.C.s on recreational toys bought by drivers who never got the time off to use them!
Puros recuerdos me recuerda mi compa el jeff teylor travajava en fremont. Corriamos juntos sejido para yucaya ca y mas pueblitos del norte de california 👍🙏
I was making $17 change back in 92' in the union, when I retired in 2015 I was only making $21, non union.. & we had a decent pay rate compared to HUNT & other like them, at least we got paid for all time at a stop, no wait time. Always had new trucks, always clean & maintained. Hauling groceries to stores.
Worked on a Roadway Louisville with Hendrickson suspension and tag axle back late 70s. No traction in weather. Liked low mud flap between axles to cut down on flats.
At around 14:15 the narrator describes the company using an IBM 7070 mainframe in 1962 in their new office. What's pictured however is an RCA Spectra 70 which wasn't available until 1965.
I worked for Roadway the last 5 years of my career, retiring in 2007. Worked for most all the LTL lines of the day during my 30 years. I hate to say it but Roadway was definitely the worst company that I ever worked for. Management was trained to be assholes and became very proficient at it. They couldn’t care less if you were a go getter or a deadbeat and constantly instigated discontent among employees. I was there when Yellow bought them out and thinned out the dead weight in management, especially at the end of the line terminals. Appreciated having the job, it’s just that they didn’t appreciate the job that most of their employees did. That’s my experience with Roadway coming off of working for Consolidated Freightways for 13 years until their closing in 2002.
Big R diesel car. Single stack mack with a window in the back. Every truck the driver would claim on the radio had 44,000 (on the front passenger seat). My Uncle Gene worked Chicago Heights dispatch as a coordinator 15 years. Then went to Barstow working for Yellow Freight. Norm Mayor, a well known driver for both companies. Both good guys, gone now, would do anything for anyone.
RPS, Roadway Package System became FDX or FedEX Ground in 1998. I joined then and retired in 2008. They were very very good to me. More money in this than robbing banks.
Dont see them any longer but in the past there was motor courts called Roadway Inns. Usually they had lounges and some instances, resturants. Wonder if the two were connected in someway?
2 completely different companies. Spelled Rodeway Inn and Roadway Express. I worked for the latter. Women in the office would tell me about people calling to make reservations for a room. Lol
Larry Be I'd think the Interstate highway would make trucking more efficient. I recall when I was a little kid living in Mount Carroll, Illinois they built a new highway Route 52 that bypassed the town and trucks didn't have to go on narrow streets or difficult corners to get through town. They could bypass Mount Carroll altogether. That should have made the trucking companies more efficient. No doubt that there were other places that had the same deal with the new roads. Sadly some places died when the New roads were built, Mount Carroll was one of them
Glenn Lego You are most correct about modern roads impacting rural communities. The diners that used to serve truckers lost that traffic but travelers could bypass the congestion of towns as well getting to their destinations no longer seeing retail stores either. Locally, bypasses occur today that hurt local economy just to bow to the needs of commuters and retail needs that mainstreet can no longer change to accommodate (shopping centers and big name retailers).
I worked for YRC the pay and benefits where great and the guys on the day shift where great however I was an apprentice mechanic and I had only one co worker on my shift and that was a drunk 🥴 who did not want me there and the afternoon shift made me feel the same I quite it was hard for me to give up a good paying job like that but not being wanted and no it’s one to train me I was forced out I wish I could have made it a career
I've been driving 36 years last twenty in the teamsters.the equipment has come along way since I started.the biggest trailer we had at the time was a 45'
My freinds dad who was like a dad to me drove for roadway for over 40 years had diamond ring for no accidents and 3 didgit id number great guy was proud as fuck of his ring wish his kids missed him as much as me
Did Roadway still have some owner operators from the '50s to present? I'm asking because I spoke to someone who said they used to be a contractor for Roadway and the terminology he was using is still used by FedEx Ground today.
local rail and yards have gone driverless in many places. How long before 18 wheelers are barrelling down the road without a driver? Next year or the year after?
A friend of mine only company he worked for was Roadway in Greenville, SC. He was drafted into the Army , spent a year in Vietnam and soon as his time was up , he was back at Roadway. He worked on the dock for as long as I know. Then I went into the Air Force and spent over 20 years , he went to driving locally . I believe he only drove local. Then he retired from Roadway. I hated to see it go away.
Unfortunately I worked at a Company bought by YRC- the vestiges of this company. I retired after they took my pension away, and so far as my company, it has posted far lower operating revenue since then. Now New Penn, is a subsidiary of YRC, along with my Company, Reddway. I hate what they did to my company, because we were once the biggest carrier in the Western United States, but they allowed the competitors to gain a lot of edges over us since then. Oak Harbor now owns the I-5 lanes into California.
I used to drive for Viking freight system back in the days. My neighbor worked for Roadway, retired a few months before the mess your referring to came into play, he told me a lot of scary stories, he was lucky that he could retire before he lost everything, I'am sorry for your pain and grief, the freight system especially in trucking, is a crooked industry, I work in the Rail industry (freight train) it's no better, and the Unions are just as bad as the carriers anymore, sad but true... Thanks for sharing!
I worked for your sister company when Reddway was TNT. Best company I ever worked for before they were bought out by Y/R. All they wanted was a decent days work for a days pay and everyone pitched in. We'd get little trinkets on our birthday, hams at Christmas, very delicious, and the TM at our terminal would get six foot subs from Subway for everyone to enjoy during the holidays. When Yellow bought us, the hams and trinkets were the first to go then downhill from there. Can't beat the pension though, even if it's 71%. Grateful for that though.
New Penn used to belong to Arnold Transportation. Mr Arnold and his wife split and he gave her the company. U.S. Express took over Arnold after he retired.
Absolutely! Now the majority of these new meatheads that drive these big rigs are what I call the "Nightmares Of The Road", they aren't much better than the cell phone huggers in the cars.
