USPS outside-bid / undercut long-time (since 1946) subcontractor long-haul trucking company, 10 Roads. $700 million yearly from US Gov.
The shutdown of 10 Roads Express, one of the USPS’s largest mail-hauling contractors, is being framed as a simple business failure, but the speaker argues it is actually a deliberate, systemic dismantling of stable working-class jobs.
Worked for them for 8 and a half years when it was Pat Salmon & Sons, the original name, founded in 1946 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Spoke to a current driver on 12/2/25 from Jacksonville, FL. They started letting drivers go back in June. Some of them had over 25 years of service. The driver told me they currently only have 9 runs from this terminal running until January 30, 2026. He has 33 years of service. Say he saw it coming 3 years ago. The Union situation had little impact. The Union actually negotiated its last contract, which gave them fewer benefits. The USPS moved its runs to the digital load board, and the independents ran loads for pennies. Covenant Transport tried to step in, but the rates were too low. 10 Roads tried to stay afloat by hauling freight. Even beer loads from Anheuser Busch in Jacksonville, but no can do. Another one bites the dust.
10 Roads Express, with an 80-year history and more than $700 million in USPS contracts as recently as 2022, abruptly announced it will close within 60 days, eliminating 2,600–3,300 jobs right before the holidays. The official corporate explanation uses the usual “difficult decision” language, but the timeline suggests the collapse was engineered.
Earlier in the year, drivers went on strike over unfair labor practices and stalled contract negotiations. While this was happening, the USPS had already begun diverting long-standing routes to the open contract market, where they could be run for half the price by gig-style contractors. This undercut 10 Roads drivers, created instability, and weakened the company long before anyone was told.
According to the speaker:
- This is not a union-caused collapse.
- It is the USPS intentionally shifting from stable, middle-class jobs to the lowest-bid gig-economy model, mirroring Amazon/Uber’s race-to-the-bottom practices.
- 10 Roads management used the strike as cover to exit the business, blaming workers while watching contracts disappear.
The strike was not about greed — it was about basic dignity and fair compensation. The company and USPS, the speaker argues, chose cost-cutting over loyalty, quality, and long-term stability.
The result: thousands of long-time drivers — people who built their lives on this work — now have 60 days to figure out their future.
The speaker frames this as part of a larger national trend:
a “controlled demolition” of the American working class, where:
- Secure jobs are converted to precarious contractor gigs,
- Worker protections are stripped away,
- Wages are driven down,
- Corporations and government agencies face zero consequences.
This isn’t an economic inevitability, the speaker says — it’s policy, choice, and deliberate design. And unless Americans realize that every worker is vulnerable to this model, the erosion of the middle class will continue.
The closing message:
Working people need the same solidarity that elites maintain for themselves. Without it, stable careers will keep disappearing, one industry at a time.