After closing abruptly on June 20 and filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on June 21, U.S. Logistics Solutions (USLS) faces another challenge: a class-action lawsuit filed by a now-former employee.
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Robert Munro, who formerly served as a manager of loss prevention and corporate security at USLS’ Atlanta terminal, has accused the logistics company of violating the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act ( WARN Act ).
The legislation stipulates that companies that employ more than 100 workers must provide 60 days’ worth of notice to proper officials before closing a facility or conducting mass layoffs. According to Texas records, as of Friday, USLS had not filed a WARN notice in the state, where its headquarters were.
Munro’s lawsuit alleges that the company has not complied with its legal obligation to employees, as stipulated by the WARN Act.
“[USLS] violated the WARN Act by failing to give [Munro] and other similarly situated employees…at least 60 days’ advance written notice of termination, as required by the WARN Act,” Munro argues.
The complaint seeks to recover the compensation and benefits he says he and others lost as a result of USLS’s failure to provide advance notice of the facility closures.
“[USLS] failed to pay the [Munro] and the other similarly situated former employees their respective wages, salary, commissions, bonuses, accrued holiday pay and accrued vacation for 60 calendar days following their respective terminations and failed to make the 401(k) contributions and provide health insurance coverage and other employee benefits under ERISA in respect to them for 60 calendar days from and after the dates of their respective terminations,” the complaint reads.
Munro’s counsel estimates the size of the class could be around 2,000—a figure which may have been pulled from a LinkedIn post by Eric Culberson, the now-former president of USLS. But Ten Oaks said USLS employed closer to 1,200 people.
Ten Oaks declined to add further comment about the lawsuit, referring back to a previous statement it had given Sourcing Journal noting that the lenders for USLS had pulled the funding and stating that the company regretted the lack of notice it gave employees and customers about the closure.
Still, hundreds of workers have been shaken by the closure of USLS, particularly with little-to-no warning. Cassie Hallik, the now-former chief customer service officer at USLS’s Charlotte terminal, said she never heard directly from USLS about the closure until she reached out to the company.
Instead, she heard the news from those she worked with at the company.
“I woke up in the middle of the night—about 3 a.m.—to my phone blowing up. And I was finding out from drivers, their wives what was going on, and I had no idea,” she told Sourcing Journal. “A lot of employees got text messages. I did not; I didn’t have any communication. I had to reach out to…the head of HR, just to get our termination papers through email.”
Hallik said she has received pay for all the days of work she completed, but had not received any information from the company about her family’s health insurance or other benefits as of Tuesday.
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She said not everyone who worked with USLS at the Charlotte facility saw their final paychecks, though. Hallik was a full-time employee of USLS, but the company used some contract drivers to keep up with demand and save money, she said.
“My boss had our office manager run payroll immediately just to make sure,” she said. “But I know our owner-operators—which they’re contract drivers—haven’t been paid in about two weeks.”
A Ten Oaks spokesperson said employees of USLS have all received a final paycheck.
Though Hallick had detected some signs of trouble at the business leading up to its eventual closure, the Charlotte terminal had been exceeding expectations, even where other locations failed, she said. She noted that, according to her records, in 2024 the Charlotte USLS terminal was bringing in about $58,000 in daily profit, nearly double the $30,000 daily profit it was bringing in, on average, in 2023.
Despite that profitability, a loss of a major contract did negatively impact USLS, she said.
According to Hallik, the loss of a contract with Bath & Body Works Inc.—formerly LBrands—caused a major disruption for the at-large organization. Though there had been some speculation that USLS had also lost a contract with Gap’s Old Navy, Hallik said the Charlotte terminal had continued to serve the apparel brand until its final hours, though not without strict instructions from Gap Inc.
Hallik said part of the reason for the disarray inside the company could have been the high turnover rate upon Ten Oaks’ acquisition of USLS, which was previously Forward Air Solutions, in 2021.
“Most of the employees are very new from the transition. They got rid of everyone pretty much, and they just wanted to rebuild. However, they tried to rebuild with no knowledge, no training. So all of these terminals, a lot of them didn’t have managers, office managers. They were just thrown in,” she explained.
Nonetheless, Hallik’s team and other terminals’ teams put forth their best efforts to service customers gracefully, while turning a profit. Despite that, she and her teammates now face difficult emotions upon the closure of USLS, she said.
“Ever since Yellow went out of business , all of us have been fearful of walking in and nothing being open,” Hallik told Sourcing Journal. “We knew we were struggling, so we all, as a team, worked twice as hard. And now, the trust was lost completely.”
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