Renee Stingley v. Laci Transport Inc .

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
Nos. 24-1612 & 24-1613
R ENEE S TINGLEY , et al.,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
LACI TRANSPORT I NC ., et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
M ARTANEZE JOHNSON , et al.,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
BOSMAN TRUCKING, I NC ., et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
Appeals from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
Nos. 18-cv-06221 & 19-cv-02066 — John F. Kness, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED DECEMBER 5, 2024 — DECIDED A PRIL 2, 2026
____________________

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2 Nos. 24-1612 & 24-1613
Before R OVNER , S YKES , and S T. EVE, Circuit Judges.
R OVNER , Circuit Judge. The plaintiffs in these class action
lawsuits, which have been consolidated for disposition, are
current and former shuttle truck drivers who drive routes en-
tirely within Illinois, moving truckloads of automobile parts
that were fabricated outside Illinois and their custom storage
containers, to and from a Ford Motor Company (“Ford”) as-
sembly plant in Chicago. They filed class action suits against
the defendants alleging that the failure to pay them overtime
wages violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), 29
U.S.C. §§ 201 et seq., the Illinois Minimum Wage Law, 820
ILCS § 105/1 et seq., and the Chicago Minimum Wage Law,
Municipal Code of Chicago (formerly § 1-24, now § 6-105).
Resolution of all of those claims turns on resolution of the
FLSA claim. The district court granted summary judgment in
favor of the defendants, and the plaintiffs now appeal.
The basic facts relevant to these consolidated cases are
stipulated by the parties as follows. Ford assembles vehicles
at its Chicago Assembly Plant (the “Assembly Plant”) located
at 12600 S. Torrence Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. Some of the
auto parts used at the Assembly Plant are manufactured out
of state at Ford’s own manufacturing plants outside Illinois as
well as at third-party manufacturing plants outside Illinois,
specifically for use at the Assembly Plant, based on Ford’s
projections, forecasts, and estimated need for those specific
parts at the Assembly Plant. Those parts are transported by
interstate trucking carriers. Ford selects, contracts with, pays,
and schedules those interstate truck carriers. When those auto
parts are not in immediate need at the Assembly Plant, the
deliveries by those interstate trucking carriers are directed to
certain semi-trailer storage lots which Ford owns, leases, or

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Nos. 24-1612 & 24-1613 3
otherwise controls. Those storage lots are at separate locations
that are geographically near the Assembly Plant. Plaintiffs in
both of the cases that are consolidated today stipulated that
the addresses of those storage lots included the following lo-
cations: West Lot, 2503 East 130th Street, Chicago, Illinois
60633; Stony Drop Yard, 12200 S. Paxton Avenue, Chicago, Il-
linois 60633; TC Lot, 12009 S. Ewing Avenue, Chicago, Illinois
60617; South Lot, 13535 S. Torrence Avenue, Chicago, Illinois
60633; Tower, 12350 S. Avenue O, Chicago, Illinois 60633;
Campus, 12249 and 12243 S. Burley Avenue, Chicago, Illinois
60633; and 3400 E. 126th Place, Chicago, Illinois 60633. The
suit involving the Boseman Trucking defendants included as
well the following locations as storage facilities: Dakota,
12523 South Carondolet Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60633; Chi-
cago Stamping Plant, 1000 Lincoln Hwy., Chicago Heights, Il-
linois 60411; and MOD Center, Alsip, Illinois. For the purpose
of this consolidated action, we focus on the storage lots that
are in common.
Those storage lots are used to stage trailers of auto parts
manufactured out of state while awaiting transport to the As-
sembly Plant, so that trailers of parts not scheduled for imme-
diate use at the Assembly Plant do not take up space at the
Assembly Plant. Ford tracks the location and contents of each
trailer of out of state parts while they are temporarily stored
at the storage lots. Most of the auto parts manufactured out of
state are not processed, assembled, or comingled with other
parts while temporarily stored in trailers at the storage lots.
Within two or three days after their arrival at the storage lots,
most of the trailers containing those parts are transported to
the Assembly Plant by the plaintiff shuttle truck drivers.
Eventually, and as needed, all of the trailers staged at the stor-
age lots are transported to the Assembly Plants for use of the

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4 Nos. 24-1612 & 24-1613
parts on the assembly lines. The plaintiff shuttle truck drivers
transport those trailers from the storage lots to the Assembly
Plant on public roads, and after the parts are unloaded, they
transport the trailers back to the storage lots. Within two or
three days, the interstate carriers then pick up the trailers,
which still contain the custom shipping racks and containers
for the shipment of the auto parts, from those storage lots and
return them to the manufacturing plants, where they can be
used again to transport such parts. Ford is the “shipper” of
empty racks and containers transported from the Assembly
Plant to Ford’s out of state parts manufacturing plants or
other third-party manufacturers, and Ford tracks each semi-
trailer containing empty auto part racks and containers arriv-
ing at and leaving the storage lots.
The plaintiffs allege that the defendants failed to pay them
overtime wages as is required by the FLSA, which requires
overtime pay for any employee who works more than 40
hours in a workweek. 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1). The statute, how-
ever, exempts from its overtime provisions employees “with
respect to whom the Secretary of Transportation has power to
establish qualifications and maximum hours of service pursu-
ant to the provisions of § 31502 of Title 49” of the Motor Car-
rier Act (“MCA”). 29 U.S.C. § 213(b)(1); Collins v. Heritage
Wine Cellars, Ltd., 589 F.3d 895, 897 (7th Cir. 2009); Burlaka v.
Contract Transport Services LLC, 971 F.3d 718, 719 (7th Cir.
2020). That section of the MCA allows the Secretary of Trans-
portation to “establish qualifications and maximum hours of
service for employees of a motor carrier if ‘property … [is]
transported by [the] motor carrier between a place in a State
and a place in another State,’ 49 U.S.C. §§ 13501(1)(A),
31502(b), provided that the employees ‘engage in activities of
a character directly affecting the safety of operation of motor

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Nos. 24-1612 & 24-1613 5
vehicles in the transportation on the public highways of pas-
sengers or property in interstate or foreign commerce within
the meaning of the Motor Carrier Act.’” Collins, 589 F.3d at
897, quoting 29 C.F.R. § 782.2(a).
The critical question for the summary judgment motions
in this case was whether the MCA excused the defendants
from paying overtime wages, that would otherwise be re-
quired by the FLSA, to those shuttle drivers that handled the
transportation from the storage lots to the Assembly Plant
and returned the trailers with the now-empty specialized
racks back to the storage lots once the parts were unloaded.
As the above language of the FLSA and MCA makes clear, the
availability of overtime wages for truck drivers can depend
upon whether the routes to which they are assigned are inter-
state or intrastate ones. In order to deter interstate drivers
from driving extra hours, thereby impeding the safety of
those on the roads, the MCA prohibits the payment of over-
time wages. Burlaka, 971 F.3d at 719. Even those who drive
intrastate routes, however, such as the plaintiffs here, can fall
under the MCA exemption. That is because “[t]he scope of an
interstate commerce run under the MCA … includes a purely
intrastate run so long as it is a part of a continuous interstate
journey,” [and] “[t]his continuity is not broken by routine in-
terruptions that ‘are no more than the normal stops or stages
that are common in interstate sales.’” Id. at 720, quoting Col-
lins, 589 F.3d at 898. “’[I]f the halt in the movement of goods
is a convenient intermediate step in the process of getting
them to their final destinations, they remain “in commerce”
until they reach those points.’” Id., quoting Walling v. Jackson-
ville Paper Co., 317 U.S. 564, 568 (1943).

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6 Nos. 24-1612 & 24-1613
Thus, the availability of overtime wages here turns on
whether the intrastate routes are part of a continuous inter-
state journey. But the term “continuous” has a broader mean-
ing than the common understanding of that term would sug-
gest. The focus is on when the goods “ceased to be in practical
continuity with a larger interstate journey.” (internal quota-
tion marks omitted) Collins, 589 F.3d at 900. We addressed the
impact of a temporary stop for storage, before completing the
journey, in Collins.
In Collins, we held that if a wine shipper intended to ship
its wine from out of state to a wholesale distributor in the Chi-
cago suburb, and title passed to the distributor when the wine
arrived at the distributor’s warehouse, then the subsequent
delivery of such wine by the distributor to retail stores with
which it contracted would be classified as intrastate ship-
ments. Id. The original interstate shipment in that scenario
was fulfilled when the shipment arrived at its intended desti-
nation to the distributor. On the other hand, if a shipper con-
tracted to provide wine to a retail store, and in the course of
that shipment the wine was loaded from one carrier to the
other, with the second one operating entirely within the state
of the final destination, the use of the second carrier would
“be as inconsequential as the fact that en route to the store the
truck had stopped for a red light.” Id. The shipment would be
an interstate shipment even though one of the carriers that
was used operated solely intrastate.
Collins further held that even the storage of the wine in a
warehouse pending arrival to the final destination did not
prevent the subsequent shipment from being part of the same
interstate journey. In Collins, Heritage shipped wine to ware-
houses in Illinois. About a fourth of the wine shipped to the

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Nos. 24-1612 & 24-1613 7
warehouse in Illinois had been ordered in advance by retail
stores. Id. at 898. The wine was briefly stored in the warehouse
by Heritage because Heritage had an order in hand from retail
stores for such wine, and we held that “the fact that the wine
pauses in its Heritage-controlled journey to the retail outlet is
of no greater consequence than the unloading and reloading
of [] shipped goods. …” Id. As to the remaining wine for
which no such pre-existing retail contract existed, Heritage
purchased and shipped that wine based on its estimates of
customer demands, and none of the wine underwent any al-
teration on its trip from the vineyard to the retail stores. Id.
We held in Collins that “when a shipper transports his prod-
uct across state lines for sale by him to customers in the desti-
nation state, and the product undergoes no alteration during
its journey to the shipper’s customers, and interruptions in
the journey that occur in the destination state are no more
than the normal stops or stages that are common in interstate
sales, such as temporary warehousing, the entire journey
should be regarded as having taken place in interstate com-
merce within the meaning of the Motor Carrier Act’s exemp-
tion from the Fair Labor Standards Act.” Id.
The relevant distinction, then, in separating intrastate
from interstate transportation in such a scenario is whether
the shipper had a fixed and persisting transportation intent
beyond the terminal storage point at the time of shipment. In
making that determination in Collins, we considered four cri-
teria: “(1) the shipper, although it doesn’t have to have lined
up its ultimate customers when the product arrives at the
warehouse, ‘bases its determination of the total volume to be
shipped through the warehouse on projections of customer
demand that have some factual basis’; (2) ‘no processing or
substantial product modification of substance occurs at the

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8 Nos. 24-1612 & 24-1613
warehouse’; (3) ‘while in the warehouse, the merchandise is
subject to the shipper’s control and direction as to the subse-
quent transportation’; and (4) ‘the shipper or consignee must
bear the ultimate payment for transportation charges even if
the warehouse or distribution center directly pays the trans-
portation charges to the carrier’ (this goes to the shipper’s re-
sponsibility for the original interstate journey). If these condi-
tions are satisfied, the intrastate leg at the end of the shipment
should be deemed part of an interstate shipment.” Id. at 899–
900, quoting ICC Policy Statement, Motor Carrier Interstate
Transportation—From Out-of-State Through Warehouses to
Points in Same States, 57 Fed. Reg. 19812 (May 8, 1992).
Applying those criteria to the case at hand, the district
court properly held that the routes by the plaintiffs were part
of an interstate shipment. The circumstances of the Ford ship-
ments are analogous to that of the wine shipments by Herit-
age in the Collins case discussed above. In both cases, the ship-
ments are intended to be delivered to a destination, but are
diverted temporarily to a storage facility so as to allow for a
timely delivery when needed at the intended destination. In
Heritage, we held that the warehouse time did not alter the
interstate nature of the shipment, even though the expecta-
tions as to the final destination for much of the wine was
based on expected market conditions not actual in-hand con-
tracts. Here, the auto parts are intended to be delivered to the
Assembly Plant at a time that they are needed by the Assem-
bly Plant, and the temporary diversion to the storage lot, just
as the storage of the wine in the warehouse, does not alter the
interstate nature of the shipment. The original and persisting
intended destination for the shipment was always the Assem-
bly Plant, not the storage lot, and only parts not immediately
needed by the Assembly Plant were held temporarily in the

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Nos. 24-1612 & 24-1613 9
storage lots. The parts are ordered based on expected inven-
tory needs and are generally transported from the storage lots
to the Assembly Plant within 2-3 days of arrival at the storage
lots. The same criteria as in Collins demonstrates the interstate
nature of the trips by the shuttle drivers: Ford based its deter-
mination of the total volume to be shipped through the stor-
age facility on projections of demand that had some factual
basis, as is apparent by the use of the parts within 2-3 days;
no processing or product modification occurs at the storage
facility; Ford controls the parts while in the storage lots and
directs the transportation of the parts to the Assembly Plant;
and Ford is responsible for the payments to the drivers.
The plaintiffs challenge that conclusion, however, arguing
that the storage lots and the Assembly Plant should be con-
sidered to be one destination, referring to it as the “Ford As-
sembly Campus.” They do not attempt to argue that the tem-
porary stop made by some of the interstate carriers at the As-
sembly Plant before heading to the storage lots completed the
journey, but rather assert that the arrival by the interstate car-
riers at the storage lots ends the interstate journey because the
storage lots are part of the Ford Campus just as a stockroom
in the back of a retail store is part of a store. In so characteriz-
ing the storage lots, they argue that the parts thus arrived at
their fixed and intended destination once the interstate carri-
ers arrived at the “Ford Assembly Campus,” which includes
the storage lots at the many addresses listed above. That ar-
gument cannot withstand scrutiny.
First, the parties’ stipulated facts in each of the cases con-
solidated for disposition provide that “[t]he Ford Motor Com-
pany (“Ford”) assembles vehicles at Ford’s Chicago Assembly
Plant (“CAP”) located at 12600 S. Torrence Avenue, Chicago,

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10 Nos. 24-1612 & 24-1613
Illinois 60633.” Case 1:18-cv-06221 Doc. 189 at 2, #4; Case 1:19-
cv-02066, Doc. 135 at 2, #4. That stipulated fact provides a very
specific address for the Ford Assembly Plant, and one that
does not include locations remote from it such as the storage
lots. The stipulated facts also reveal that “Ford uses certain
semi-trailer storage lots (the “Ford lots”) nearby the CAP,
which Ford owns, leases, or otherwise controls, to stage the
trailers containing those out of state parts until such time as
those parts are needed for use at the CAP.” Id. at 3, #11. Once
again, the stipulated fact recognizes that the storage lots are
not a part of the Assembly Plant but are at distinct locations
“nearby” the Assembly Plant. Nothing in those facts supports
a characterization of the storage lots as a part of the Assembly
Plant. And the list of the addresses of those storage lots makes
clear that they are distinct locations. Moreover, the storage
lots are not contiguous with the Assembly Plant, and in fact
are separated from that plant and each other by miles and can
be reached only by traversing public roads. The storage lots
are not even all owned by Ford, given the stipulation that the
storage lots are owned, leased, or otherwise controlled by
Ford. The argument that the storage lots are part of one over-
arching Ford Campus rests entirely on the relative geographic
proximity of the storage lots to the Assembly Plant, described
as a five-mile area around the Assembly Plant, and Ford’s use
of those lots. But the plaintiffs provide no basis for concluding
that the geographic proximity renders the lots and the Assem-
bly Plant one comprehensive destination. In fact, when asked
at oral argument whether they would make the same argu-
ment whether the lots were 5 miles away or 100 miles away,
counsel acknowledged that it would be a harder argument to
make if the storage lots were 100 miles away and that such
circumstance might reflect more of a warehousing model as

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Nos. 24-1612 & 24-1613 11
in Collins. Their argument would essentially mean that deliv-
eries to any storage lots or warehouses located close to the fi-
nal destination would be considered delivery to the final des-
tination, even though further transportation by carriers over
public roads was needed to complete the delivery to the in-
tended final destination. There is no legal support for draw-
ing such a line, and it would be impractical in application be-
cause there would be no standards for identifying how far is
too far for such an analysis to apply.
In making that argument that it is part of one campus, the
plaintiffs repeatedly rely not on the stipulated facts, but on
deposition testimony by Calvin Washington, Ford Material
Planning and Logistics Manager, but that testimony does not
support their characterization. Doc. 285-2, Case No. 1:18-cv-
06221. At best, his testimony demonstrates that when the
parts were brought to the storage lots by the interstate carri-
ers, Ford kept a record of the “arrival” of the parts and the
storage lot location at which they were stored. That would be
expected for any stop in which goods are temporarily stored
at a warehouse or storage facility. And the same deponent
made clear that the “arrived” designation simply meant that
the goods were physically at that location, and that Ford did
not record the parts as being in “actual possession” until they
were unloaded at the Assembly Plant at Torrence Avenue. Id.
at 96–97, 113. He even testified that until they unload the
trailer and take possession at the Assembly Plant, the goods
are in the carrier’s hands and the responsibility of the carrier.
Id. at 109–111. In short, nothing in that document can establish
the storage lots as part of the Assembly Plant such that deliv-
ery to the intended destination of the Assembly Plant would
be completed upon arrival at the lots.

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12 Nos. 24-1612 & 24-1613
In summary, the storage lots are at locations geograph-
ically distinct from the final destination for the products – the
Assembly Plant – and the parts can only be transported to the
Assembly Plant from those storage lots by traveling over pub-
lic roads, thus allowing the Department of Transportation to
have authority over the transport. There is no additional dis-
tance requirement in the law that would alter the legal status,
and the claim that it is all one campus is not factually sup-
ported. As was true of the deliveries of the warehoused goods
in Collins, the transportation by the shuttle drivers to and
from the storage lots is a part of the interstate shipment of the
parts from the out-of-state manufacturing plants to the As-
sembly Plant. Similarly, the shipment of the empty custom
containers from the Assembly Plant to the storage lots by the
shuttle drivers, where an interstate carrier retrieves them and
transports them back to the manufacturing plants for reuse in
the next cycle, is part of an interstate shipment, because from
the moment the empty containers leave the Assembly Plant,
the intended destination is clearly the out-of-state manufac-
turing plant.
Accordingly, the district court properly granted summary
judgment in favor of the defendants in each of the cases. The
decision of the district court is AFFIRMED.

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