Mail delivery may slow down, as 10 Roads Express drivers in Tampa, Miami join the picket line.
Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: Feb. 28, 2025
Host: When you’re being told “the check is in the mail” these days, you may have to lower your expectations even more than usual. Here is why: The U.S. Postal Service has been put in a squeeze by a Trump-appointed Postmaster General for several years. So USPS, in turn, put the squeeze on its contractors, asking them to cut the price they charge. One of the biggest USPS contractors is Iowa-based 10 Roads Express. The company has fallen on hard times because USPS is its sole customer. At the end of that chain of squeezes are 2,600 10 Roads truckers. Now, some of those truckers have had it, and they decided to go on strike, including here in Florida.
Johannes Werner: 10 Roads drivers have been joining the Teamsters union in droves over the past two years, and last week, more than 500 of the company’s 2,600 drivers began picketing in the Midwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Then, on Thursday, their colleagues at 10 Roads terminals in Atlanta, in Mobile, Ala., and—most importantly for us here—in Miami and in Tampa joined the strike.
Here is one of the striking 10 Road Express drivers, explaining why he is picketing.
Striking trucker: It’s kind-of a slap in the face that the brokers are doing the same job that we were doing. The Post Office has taken the jobs off of us and giving them to less-paid. They’re working for about half the price.
JW: The immediate reason is unsuccessful bargaining and what the union says is an “insulting and unrealistic” contract proposal.
Here is how the Teamsters union puts it: “As one of the largest USPS contractors, 10 Roads Express hauls U.S. mail using hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars—yet it refuses to fairly compensate the workers who keep this critical service running. It’s time for 10 Roads to stop stalling with the Teamsters and bring a real contract offer back to the bargaining table.”
The union says the strike could disrupt mail delivery across the country, and that it will continue until the company produces a fair contract offer.
But what’s driving the conflict is the squeeze on the company. 10 Roads Express was the second-largest contractor with the Postal Service in 2022, getting about $700 million worth of business. But that has been shrinking. Under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, the Postal Service has shifted some of its freight spending from long-time trucking partners to the freight brokerage market while telling others they had to lower prices.
In 2023, 10 Roads laid off 60 truckers.
We reached out to the 10 Roads general manager for the eastern region but did not hear back by deadline.
Johannes Werner, reporting for WSLR News.
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