Yellow

XPO opened up three of the 28 service center locations it acquired through an early December court-supervised auction, in which a dozen trucking companies bought properties that resold about three-fourths of Yellow’s properties for a total of just under $1.9 billion.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has won what the union calls “a major victory” in a breach of contract lawsuit against Yellow Corp. Unfortunately for about 24,000 Teamsters who lost their jobs when Yellow ceased operations last August, the victory arrives about nine months too late.

The liquidation of Yellow Corp., once the largest less-than-truckload (LTL) and the nation’s 13th-largest trucking company when it ceased operations last August, has continued to prove that Yellow’s assets were valuable even without operating as a functioning trucking company.  

The cessation of Yellow continues to have repercussions throughout the $58 billion LTL market. Now, a shuffling of the capacity equation is causing strategic changes, and shippers need to adapt to the new alignment of resources to find operational success.

It’s hardly much consolation to its 30,000 or so former workers—or shippers left without Yellow’s reliable capacity for 49,000 less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments a day—but Yellow says it has repaid in full a $700 million loan approved for the struggling trucker in the final days of the Trump administration.

A bankruptcy court in Delaware has approved plans by the administrators of bankrupt less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier Yellow Corp. to use auctioneers to sell the company’s rolling stock. Yellow filed for bankruptcy on Aug. 6 and ceased operations as the nation’s 13th-largest overall trucking company and third-largest LTL operator.

The first big winner in the bankruptcy dismantling of Yellow Corp. is less-than-truckload (LTL) rival, Richmond, Va.-based Estes Express, the nation’s fourth-largest LTL carrier.

Richmond, Va.-based Estes Express, the nation’s fourth-largest LTL carriers with $4.4 billion revenue last year, has made a $1.3 billion bid for all of defunct Yellow’s 160 company-owned terminals.

With the dust settling from the exit of Yellow Corp. in the less-than-truckload (LTL) market, following its Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing earlier this month, various industry stakeholders have taken time since then to assess what Yellow’s departure, as well as its 8%-to-9% sector market share, means for LTL and the freight transportation sector, too.

In this podcast, Jeff Berman, Group News Editor for Logistics Management and the Peerless Media Supply Chain Group, interviews Glenn Koepke, GM, Network Collaboration, for Chicago-based FourKites, a provider of real-time tracking and visibility solutions across transportation modes and digital platforms.

Yellow Corp. made it official Monday. It didn’t need a Teamsters’ strike to enter bankruptcy. In its 100th year, Yellow did it completely on its own.

While the calendar indicates that just about the first seven months of 2023 are officially in the books, this seems like as good of a time as any to take a quick look back at things on a year-to-date basis, as they relate to key supply chain, logistics, and freight transportation trends and themes.

Yellow, which had $5.24 million revenue in the $58 billion less-than-truckload (LTL) market, told the union it was formally declaring bankruptcy.

While it has yet to be confirmed by the company itself, the future of Nashville-based Yellow Corporation, the third-largest United States less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier, with about 8% of the national market, looks bleak, according to various reports. A Wall Street Journal article published this week indicated that Yellow “is preparing to file for bankruptcy,” citing “people familiar with the matter,” adding that it increases the possibility of Yellow shutting down, “as customers abandon it amid a cash crunch and union negotiations.”

A potentially company-ending strike at Yellow Corp. was averted when the union says its Central States Health and Welfare Fund agreed Sunday to extend health care benefits for workers at Yellow subsidiaries YRC Freight and Holland.