FORT MYERS — Former employees of Good Wheels met at the non-profit’s headquarters Wednesday morning to voice their frustration.
Many of them still haven’t received their last paycheck, and are still in the job search. That's confusing given what CEO Alan Mandel told us last week.
“An organization in town has reached out and told us that they would like all of our employees to apply there, which is really good news for them," said Mandel.
We shared that account with former Good Wheels driver Dennis Osterbrink.
"Well I’d like to know where that company is, because I’ll go and apply for them," said Osterbrink.
But it gets worse, because after talking with the former maintenance manager, we learned there are thousands of dollars still owed to vendors all over the county. Michael Franklin, who owns Cape Coral Towing, said he’s worked with Good Wheels for more than 20 years.
“It’s really gotten worse the last 2 to 3 years, where they’ve gotten really, really, really in the hole," said Franklin.
Right now, Good Wheels is about $8,000 in the hole with Cape Coral Towing, but Franklin said that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
“We were told that we couldn’t take the vehicles over to the local Chevy dealership anymore. They had to go down to Naples for service, or for warranty work, because of a lack of funding or lack of payments being paid to that vendor," said Franklin.
When those vendors worked with Good Wheels, they came to the maintenance manager, Antonio Thomas.
“There’s some vendors who stuck in with us a lot, through the thick and thin, because this place been in business for 30 years," said Thomas.
Thomas said he was told to ask vendors for work, and tell them a grant was coming in the future to pay for it.
“It was the CEO. The CEO was telling everybody that. We only knew what he told us," said Thomas.
But the money never came, and now Thomas is out of a job, and several vendors like Cape Coral Towing are wondering if they’ll ever be paid. Thomas said he knows of more than $100,000 Good Wheels may still owe to vendors, and one of the vendors we spoke with said, at this point, it seems like Good Wheels filing for bankruptcy is almost a certainty. Meanwhile, every former employee we met on Wednesday was still looking for work.
