Major trucking company out of business

DELANCO, N.J. - May 19, 2008 (WPVI) -- A New Jersey trucking company is going out of business.

Jevic Transportation Trucking Company, based in Delanco, Burlington County is closing the doors, and laying-off 1,500 workers. Last year, Jevic had revenues of $350 million, but now the company's chief executive officer says soaring prices for diesel fuel are just too much to bear.

Jevic has been in business for 27 years. Employees like Edwin Arvelo worry where they'll go next. He's spent more than 10 years at Jevic. He was hoping that his job would be secure, even with the recent financial strain. "I figured I'd retire here, like everyone else," Arvelo said.

Employees found out just this morning that today would be their last day, and there are no severance packages.

"They took away bonuses, they took away this, they took away that, we were getting 'hold on', and we held on, and now we're getting no health care or life insurance from this day on," said Arvelo.

David Hardy said he enjoyed his 5 years at Jevic. "It's good place to work for, I just don't like how it came to an end."

Jevic says right now the whole trucking industry is struggling. "I think it's an economic perfect storm, rising fuel prices each week, we all know they're going up, and people aren't shipping as much as before. At lot of different factors went into this," said Peter Robinson, Vice President of Marketing.

Since going private 2 years ago, the company says it re-structured to improve costs. Jevic had the largest fleet of heated trailers in the country, which helped protect certain freight. But the company says even its good reputation and history couldn't save it.

Robinson said CEO Dave Gorman did what we could, to try to keep the company afloat. "We knew that he was probably fighting until the last possible moment, to try to bring something together."

Jevic will keep a handful of employees working for the next two months or so, in order to honor existing contracts.

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