BAX Global closing at Toledo Express - 700 jobs lost

http://www.wtol.com/story/15129292/bax-global-at-toledo-airport-to-shut-down

Think the Port has had it's "Oh crap!" moment yet?

Overall this is bad for the local economy, though I have to admit I have no fond memories of BAX Global. I worked there about 12 years ago for six months when I started the process of re-inventing myself (leaving the restaurant business and eventually moving to academia). At the time I thought some industrial work would help me focus on what I wanted to do, but all the place mostly taught me was that physical labor is... well, tough work.

For half the shift I worked on the conveyors, sorting freight and doing a lot of heavy lifting. For the next half of the shift I loaded planes, doing much the same kind of work except in reverse. Both jobs were unmercifully hot, and they would not allow you to bring a water bottle on the work site. To get a drink or use the rest room, you had to get a supervisor's approval, and they were usually impossible to find. Near the end of my employment I moved up to driving a K-loader, but it was still monotonous and physically demanding work, and I moved on.

This mini-rant has little to do with the place closing, except to highlight that this was a highly efficient non-union facility. The company worked you hard, paid somewhat low wages (I started at something like $8.75 an hour back in 1999), relied heavily on a part-time work force (probably 80 percent of the facility was staffed by part-timers working 25-30 hours a week) continuously found ways to speed up processes and reduce down time, and yet in this economy even an efficient place like BAX can go under.

Think the Port has had it's "Oh crap!" moment yet?

In a word, no.

BAX Global was the best job I ever had as a college student (2003-2005) before quitting in '05 and starting my career in IT.

historymike, when I worked there... you could go to the bathroom as you please and bring drinks and snacks anytime you wanted. In fact, every month we would have a pot luck. The work was definitely demanding and the weather was ridiculous at time (super hot and frigid cold), but that was part of the job.

Sucks to read about the loss of employment... this certainly is the dagger for Toledo Express

The biggest hit is obviously the loss of 700 jobs and the loss of revenue for the airport. However, if I remember right the international flights are not operated exclusively for DB Schenker (BAX), but are on a capacity share program. So it is highly probably there will at least still be international cargo operations to/from Hong Kong, Dubai, Frankfurt, and Sydney. Not sure if the Mexican and Canadian flights were aligned the same way. However, those flights were very full already. If Schenker was controlling only 50% of the space on those flights, it might not be that difficult for someone else to come in and fill it up.

There is plenty of demand for the operations at Toledo, it is just a matter of finding an operator (or operators) whose costs will be able to make it work. It is a nice facility too. It is just going to take a little work to find new tenants for it and start to fill the void that Schenker will leave in the market.