Manuel Gomez had wanted to work for trucking giant Yellow for years—so when the call came in 2013 he hustled for two days to pass his hazardous-materials certifications and got hired, ecstatic at the thought that he had won his forever job. “I was back on track with my bills,” the 45-year-old trucker told Fortune. “It was a union job, so as long as you did your job, you didn’t have anything to worry about.”
When Yellow abruptly shut down this summer and filed for bankruptcy protection, leaving Gomez and 30,000 more workers jobless, he said he didn’t get so much as a text. “It was a total shock,” he said. “You don't think a multimillion dollar company is just going to one day close their doors.”
