Merry Christmas and B.T.W. you are all fired

Talk about harshing someone's mellow -- from the Journal of Commerce:

Arrow Trucking Shutdown Strands Drivers
Flatbed carrier Arrow Trucking suspended operations this week, stranding hundreds of drivers around the country on Christmas Eve as the company reportedly tries to get new financing to resume business.

Company drivers learned of the shutdown when the Tulsa, Okla.-based company canceled its fuel credit cards on Tuesday, according to published reports. The company sent workers at its headquarters home Wednesday and by Thursday its phones were not operating and Web site was shut down.

Truckload carrier Schneider National issued a statement Thursday saying its trucks and drivers would offer rides home, �or as close to home as possible,� to an estimated 1,400 drivers who may have been stranded by Arrow�s abrupt action.

But fortunatly, all is not Scrooge and his minions. From the Christian Science Monitor:

Arrow Trucking: Drivers band together to help those dumped by Arrow
For Arrow Trucking drivers like Jenn Cruthis, it was the worst of times.

The Tulsa, Okla., company wouldn't pay for simple repairs on her first truck. So Ms. Cruthis used $787 of her own money to get a second truck back to Arrow Trucking headquarters about a week ago. Mechanics sent her home: They wouldn't be fixing her truck until after the New Year for lack of funds, they said. As she was driving home to Georgia, she got a call telling her to come back.

The next morning, Arrow Trucking suspended its operations, shuttered its Tulsa headquarters, and shut off its fuel cards, leaving some of its 1,400 or so drivers stranded around the country with no fuel to get back home. Now back in Macon, Ga., Cruthis and dozens of other truckers have banded together to help their stranded bretheren.

"The way these truckers are getting out there and helping each other is amazing," Cruthis says. "They�ll sit on the radio and curse at each other all day and fight all day and then for them to stand up and help everybody like this? It's great."

The Owner-Operated Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) put together a Facebook page where truckers have been posting their routes in case they can pick up stranded Arrow drivers along the way. OOIDA has helped half a dozen truckers get home so far, wrote spokeswoman Norita Taylor in an e-mail. Truckers from Michigan to Alabama chimed in with their phone numbers and upcoming routes, offering free rides, laundry at their homes, and hot meals.

By Tuesday afternoon, Daimler Trucks was offering bus tickets home or $200 cash to Arrow drivers who turned in their Freightliner trucks to a Freightliner dealer. The company leased about 1,000 trucks to Arrow. By Wednesday evening, some 350 Arrow drivers had called Daimler, according to Jack Ferry, spokesman for Daimler Trucks Financial, the company's finance arm.

On Wednesday morning, Navistar matched the offer for Arrow drivers with International trucks. "We're a good corporate citizen and it's the holidays," says Roy Wiley, a spokesman for Navistar. Also, "they're our trucks. We want to make certain [the drivers] take care of them."

And a bit more:

Compounding trucker frustration is the fact that because Arrow has not formally fired its employees or gone bankrupt but only suspended operations. That makes it impossible for employees to file for unemployment benefits.

Talk about a poor way to run a company. Cutting the fuel off cold is just evil. Doing this with zero prior warning is evil. I love the way the other companies and drivers are opening their homes to the stranded drivers...