Former Tony’s Express workers, drivers say mismanagement sank company

April 12, 2024

Former Tony’s Express truck drivers and other employees say financial mismanagement by new owner John Ohle led to the 70-year-old trucking company’s recent collapse.

Tony’s Express, headquartered in Fontana, California, shut down March 28 after Ohle and others sent a series of text messages starting on March 24, informing workers that the company would not be running trucks the following day “due to a truck insurance issue.”

In texts obtained by FreightWaves, Ohle sent a second message March 25 that the company was “still troubleshooting our current insurance issue and require that all employees remain off” the following day.

They never returned to work.

Two weeks after the closure, Ohle has yet to pay drivers, warehouse and dockworkers, and office personnel their final checks and for their paid time off (PTO), sources told FreightWaves. Some are owed multiple checks after previous paychecks bounced. Their medical coverage ended two days after the company shut down.

“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 FreightWaves a few days after the closure. “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.”

Ohle said he plans to have Tony’s Express employees paid but did not provide a date for when that might occur.

“We’re working right now to make sure we mitigate that situation and get everybody paid,” he said on April 2.
While Ohle initially cited insurance issues in telling employees not to report to work March 25, a source familiar with the situation said Ohle knew the company was done March 22.

The source said Tony’s Express had a recourse agreement with factoring company eCapital, which is headquartered in Aventura, Florida. When eCaital was unable to collect on invoices amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars within a certain time frame per the agreement, Tony’s was forced to buy back around $300,000 in uncollectible invoices.

One day after Tony’s closure, the source said Ohle was already in talks to take over another trucking company and brokerage.

Anthony “Tony” Raluy and his brother, George Raluy, sold the company that their father started to John Ohle in March 2023.

The formerly family-owned company had over 200 employees, including around 90 truck drivers, at the time of its closure.

In the weeks leading up to Tony’s sudden closure, drivers reported fuel cards weren’t working at various times and complained that their paychecks had bounced after the company switched from direct deposit to paper checks a few months before shuttering operations.

“Besides not getting paid for two weeks before we closed, my fuel card wouldn’t work at times, and John Ohle or one of his managers asked me to use my personal debit card to pay for fuel, which would cost hundreds of dollars,” a former Tony’s less-than-truckload driver, who didn’t want to be named for fear of retaliation, told FreightWaves. “I already had paychecks bounce from Tony’s. There’s no way I was going to use my own money and trust the company would reimburse me.”

As of publication Friday, neither Ohle nor Morgan Craven, who headed the human resources department at Tony’s, had responded to former employees’ emails about when they would receive their final checks. In his final text to employees about the immediate closure, Ohle also included Craven’s email address to ensure that she had employees’ current mailing addresses and phone numbers to send their checks when money became available.

Craven did not respond to FreightWaves’ request seeking comment. Ohle has failed to respond to new allegations raised by former employees or ex-coworkers since the first article was published about Tony’s Express’ sudden closure.

Ohle bought another family-owned trucking company that closed after two years

Ohle bought another family-owned trucking company, C&M Transportation Inc. of Kansas City, Kansas, in 2002. Two years later, he abruptly shuttered operations after closing the majority of the company’s terminals and reducing its workforce from around 150 employees to 70, according to the Kansas City Business Journal.

Ohle acknowledged that C&M “had come up short on paydays in recent months,” according to the news outlet. “We did not sufficiently fund some of our checks.”

Asked about the closure of C&M Transportation 20 years ago, Ohle blamed the collapse on a failed attempt to take the cartage company public “with some people in California.”

“It did not work out because it [C&M] probably should have been closed when I bought it because it was losing money,” he told FreightWaves. “The situation at Tony’s Express hurts a lot more because I thought I could turn things around and make it profitable again.”

Read related article here: 70-year-old California trucking company, freight brokerage closes abruptly

Company offers to hire former Tony’s employees, drivers

Joe Comins, one of the owners of Dedicated Delivery Professionals, headquartered in Santa Fe Springs, California, said his company stepped in to hire as many former Tony’s drivers as possible.

Comins said DDP took a leap of faith and leased a 70,000-square-foot warehouse in Chino, California, in hopes of acquiring some of Tony’s Express’ former clients.

“Originally, we were trying to get something worked out with Mr. Ohle, who came to us awhile ago and basically said, ‘I don’t think I can get this thing turned around.’ We were trying to do a very expeditious deal, and it just didn’t work out. We couldn’t come to a reasonable middle ground,” Comins told FreightWaves.

He said DDP has had success in acquiring some of those customers but there have been challenges.
A source familiar with the situation said the skeleton crew still working at Tony’s is allowing certain carriers to come inside its gates to pick up freight but has only allowed a few DDP trucks to enter the facility.

“DDP is wanting to hire as many ex-Tony’s drivers and other workers as soon as possible, but Joe Comins and his team can’t do this if they can’t fill up this leased warehouse,” the source said.

Comins said he’s had a lot of sleepless nights since acquiring the additional warehouse in Chino.

“We did this deal pretty fast because we thought that we were gonna have that opportunity in order to help out and service a lot of former Tony’s customers real quick, but that hasn’t come to fruition yet. But we’re hopeful,” he said. “We have a bunch of drivers already approved — they’ve done their road tests and drug screening, but we can’t put them to work yet because we don’t have boxes for them [to haul] yet.”

Red flags

Some former Tony’s employees said they saw the writing on the wall months ago. They left after their hours were cut and the company’s mechanics’ shop and on-site fuel island closed.

Ohle said when reached by FreightWaves in early April that these decisions were necessary to boost the company’s bottom line.

“Some drivers had two paychecks bounce and others had at least six weeks of paid time off they did not receive or weren’t paid their bonuses for being accident-free for a certain amount of time,” a former Tony’s driver said.

Along with its headquarters in Fontana, Tony’s operated a facility in Stockton, California, which had around 65 drivers, a terminal in Sparks, Nevada, and two satellite yards in Phoenix and Las Vegas, which had about five drivers apiece at the time of the closure. They lost their jobs on March 28.

“John [Ohle] quit paying the bills and was behind on rent payments on all of the terminals,” the source said. “The garbage company at the Sparks, Nevada, terminal quit picking up [our trash] for nonpayment.”

The source says the Raluys, who formerly owned Tony’s Express, had a long-standing truck leasing relationship with Papé Kenworth, which operates multiple dealerships along the West Coast. However, after Ohle took over, the source claims the new owner failed to make the lease payments to Papé and the dealer was forced to take back its power units.

“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,” Ohle said. “When I took over, I thought I could save the company, that I could pull a team together and save it.”

As of publication, a Papé Kenworth representative had not responded to FreightWaves’ request seeking comment.

“John switched over to Penske [to lease more tractors],” the source said. “It is my understanding he had not made a payment to Penske since making the original down payment to acquire the power units.”

According to former drivers and other employees, prior to the Raluys’ selling Tony’s Express in March 2023, the company had great relationships with vendors.

“We had A-1 status and credit with several vendors, and because of our service, we were able to bypass other trucks in line and get in and out of places,” said one long-term former Tony’s Express driver, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal. “Towards the end of it all, we lost that status and we were returning to our terminals with the freight because we couldn’t pay the lumper fees. I found out our mechanic was no longer coming around because he wasn’t getting paid.”

In recent months, one ex-employee claims some company executives, including Ohle, started paying lumper fees on their personal credit cards, which could add up to thousands of dollars per day, instead of adding funds to Comdata to pay the lumpers who were unloading Tony’s trucks at customers’ warehouses.

“It’s such a shame that John Ohle and other managers he brought with him to Tony’s Express were able to tear down this beloved company in less than a year when it took the Raluy family 70 years to build and maintain a good reputation in this industry,” a former office worker said.

A few days after the closure, one former employee was sent two videos of Tony’s Express’ tractors and equipment parked at a wrecking yard near the company’s headquarters.

“The message said, ‘Hey, look what’s in front of this wrecking yard — the mechanic’s trailer and two more rigs,’” the source said. “The second video I was sent the very next day was of more Tony’s equipment, including trailers. There was so much equipment that the wrecking yard couldn’t close their gates and the company had already started dismantling them.”

According to the California secretary of state’s office, Ohle and several of Tony’s entities have Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) liens against him and the companies.

A UCC lien allows a lender to establish priority in case of debtor default or bankruptcy. According to the lien documents, CT Corporation System is listed as the secured party in Glendale, California.

Losing hope

Without paychecks and health insurance, some said they are in a financial bind and unsure if Tony’s Express will pay them what they are owed and pay out their PTO and their mortgages, rent and other bills are due soon.

“Some of us long-term employees went through some tough times when there were some down years in trucking, but the Raluys were always transparent with us,” said a former employee. “We usually received a $100 bonus at Thanksgiving and a $300 bonus for Christmas, which meant so much to us. The Raluys wouldn’t have closed the doors without having a conversation with the employees first. They wouldn’t have sent out a text telling us this devastating news like John [Ohle] did.”
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