Editor’s note: This is part of NBC News’ Checkbook Chronicles, a series of profiles looking at the financial realities of everyday Americans and the challenges they face.
Otis Keys II, 41, The Colony, Texas
- UPS driver grappling with smaller average paychecks despite a new union contract.
- Father of four frustrated with grocery costs.
- Bucking his union’s nonendorsement and voting for Kamala Harris.
When Otis Keys II hit top-level pay for his role at UPS in 2019, he expected to start checking items off his financial bucket list. That’s not what happened, even after the Teamsters union he belongs to negotiated a historic new contract last summer.
Instead, the carrier unveiled $1 billion in cost reductions early this year that included thousands of job cuts, citing weaker demand and higher costs. Another planned round of layoffs was announced this month, although package volume increased this summer for the first time since 2022.
As the company has trimmed some workers’ hours, Keys — a Texas-based feeder driver who hauls packages from large UPS hubs to other sortation sites — said his monthly take-home pay is about $3,000 lower on average. He sometimes offsets the shortfall with whatever overtime remains available and other shift changes but still expects to net about $22,000 less by the end of this year than last.
The separated father of four said higher rent and grocery costs have thrown cold water on his financial hopes.
“I got on a savings plan, I could pay my bills, and I had extra,” he said. “Then, boom — the economy is where it’s at, and the company is doing cutbacks and layoffs. And it’s like, OK, I gotta start back from scratch again.”
Still, Keys said he feels “blessed.”
“I’m one of the fortunate ones,” he said. “There’s a lot of guys that actually had to take a hard layoff and sit home.”
Primary source of income: Keys drives full time for UPS. When the Teamsters’ contract took effect last year, his hourly pay went from about $35 to $37.70 before topping out at $45.11 in May. But the cost-cutting has meant some weeks he’s sent home without working at all.
“If he did lose overtime hours, there would still be an offset” with pay gains in the new union contract, Teamsters spokesperson Kara Deniz said of Keys’ income, and highlighted the stronger overtime provisions labor leaders negotiated.
A UPS spokesperson said feeder drivers “are the best compensated in the industry” and “their total pay and benefits package is valued at nearly double our competitors’.”
Living situation: Keys lives in a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home in The Colony, a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, with three of his four children, ages 16, 15 and 12.
His monthly rent is $1,825, up from $1,750 in 2022 when he moved in. It’s rising to $1,850 in January but is “still beating out the prices around me,” Keys said. He pays less than half the average $4,728 monthly rent for a four-bedroom in the area, according to Zumper.
The Dallas-Fort Worth metro led the U.S. in population growth in 2023 with a net influx of more than 150,000 transplants, many drawn by Texas’ comparatively low taxes and living costs, falling crime rates and fast-growing communities like Arlington and The Colony. Through the first quarter of 2024, the metro area added nearly 5,000 new leases, according to CoStar, and is second in demand only to New York.
Keys wants to buy a home but said, “I’m trying to stay there as long as I can, until I can save money and wait for interest rates to drop.”
While surging local inventory has tamped down his county’s median home price to $468,250, a 1.4% drop since June 2023, that’s still far steeper than the $169,000 Keys paid for the first home he bought, and later sold, nearly a decade ago.
Economic outlook: Though inflation is cooling, Keys said his reduced income makes it harder to get by.
In May — two weeks before his scheduled pay raise — he met with a financial adviser at his credit union and boosted his automated savings deduction from $50 per week to $250, looking to stash at least $7,000 by the end of the year to help pay for a non-work-related knee surgery. That plan lasted just weeks before his overtime was snipped, and he soon reverted to tapping his savings to cover expenses.
“I’m able to pay my bills,” he said, but “it’s kind of rough.”
Everybody’s price-gouging, everybody’s being greedy — corporate America mainly.
Otis Keys II, The Colony, Tx.
Keys said the federal government should divert some funding on foreign affairs to lowering costs at home.
“Our country is prioritizing billions and billions to non-U.S. citizens, but I just don’t think I’ll ever understand that when you have Americans struggling,” he said. “I just feel like everybody’s price-gouging, everybody’s being greedy — corporate America mainly.”
Budget pain points: Keys’ most difficult expense by far is groceries, where price growth has finally settled down but at levels many households are still adjusting to. He’s grappling with what many parents of teenage boys can attest to: “They eat, man.”
He estimates spending about $300 every two weeks to keep the fridge filled, up from $100 a few years ago.
Utilities have also grown less predictable, with the state’s usual summer swelter ratcheting up to lethal levels and Dallas’ electricity costs spiking in recent years. Keys switched providers earlier this year after a more than $500 energy bill last winter, and now pays $150-200 per month. His water costs about $100 monthly.
Previously, he said, “It was nothing to take the family out and spend $200 and not be worried about it, because I knew that, like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna be able to go work a lot of hours next week.’”
Now, he focuses on meal prep, searching out deals for meat at the local WinCo, an employee-owned bulk store. He has considered selling one of his three older-model vehicles, but in the meantime limits gas fill-ups by switching between them when money’s tight.
A self-professed “sneakerholic,” Keys hasn’t added a pair of Jordans to his closet since last year. “Once I buy the kids school clothes and things, there’s nothing left for me,” he said.
But he’s determined to get back on his savings plan and wants to launch an athletic-apparel business soon.
“I’ve been there — not making any money at all,” he said. “Some people got it worse than me.”
The upcoming election: The Teamsters recently declined to endorse either presidential candidate, though more than two-dozen of the union’s local and affinity groups have backed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Keys plans to vote for.
“I’m not a big Trump fan,” said Keys, who was put off by the former president’s anti-union comments during a two-hour conversation in August with billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whom the Republican candidate praised for firing striking workers.
“He’s a corporate business owner, and I just find it hard to believe that he’s going to be 100% behind unions,” Keys said of Trump.
The UPS driver acknowledged that Trump “says some things that catches people’s ears” — nodding to the nearly 60% of rank-and-file Teamsters supporting him, according to recent union polling — but sees potential economic change with Harris.
“I just feel like that’s the best we can do,” he said.
