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Yellow attorney: ‘Significant interest’ being shown in carrier’s trucks and trailers

Sept. 15, 2023

A Sept. 15 bankruptcy court hearing moved forward plans for the auctions of the more than 160 terminals and rolling stock of the former No. 6 carrier on the for-hire FleetOwner 500 list and onetime third-largest less-than-truckload hauler.

Geert De Lombaerde

A solid number of possible buyers of Yellow Corp.’s thousands of trucks and trailers have emerged since the less-than-truckload carrier’s bankruptcy filing and announcement that it will liquidate its assets, an attorney for the company said Sept. 15.

Allyson Smith of law firm Kirkland & Ellis told Judge Craig T. Goldblatt and others at the hearing that there’s been “significant interest” in the rolling stock of defunct Yellow. The carrier had been ranked No. 6 on the FleetOwner 500 list of for-hire carriers but closed its doors on July 28 after losing essentially all its business in the preceding days on the heels of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters threatening a strike over Yellow’s delay in making pension-plan and health care payments. Both strategic and financial buyers, Smith added, have inquired about Yellow’s trucks and trailers and have been visiting the company’s terminals to inspect the equipment.

Smith’s update was part of a gathering of stakeholders in Yellow’s Chapter 11 proceedings that was short and sweet—it clocked in at about 14 minutes—thanks to successful negotiations among the parties on final details of Yellow’s interim financing and the procedures for upcoming auctions of the company’s assets. The latter were outlined earlier this week by the company’s investment banker, who detailed a plan to Goldblatt to have the auction of Yellow’s roughly 12,000 trucks and 42,000 trailers proceed first (and be concluded by early November) with the sale of its terminals and other assets coming after.

Up next in the case: A hearing next week to approve elements of Estes Express Lines’ $1.525 billion bid for Yellow’s terminal network. The Richmond, Virginia-based company, which is No. 11 on the for-hire FleetOwner 500, first showed interest in Yellow’s real estate last month but was temporarily edged out of negotiations to be the auction’s "stalking horse"—and thus set the floor for other bidders—by Old Dominion Freight Line, which is No. 10 on the for-hire FleetOwner 500

Shares of Yellow (Ticker: YELLQ), which moved to over-the-counter trading after the company’s Chapter 11 filing, were up 3% to $1.81 on the afternoon of Sept. 15. They sat even lower at $1.78 in the morning on Sept. 18.

About the Author

Geert De Lombaerde | Senior Editor

A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of experience in business journalism. Since 2021, he has written about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications FleetOwner, Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, Oil & Gas Journal, and T&D World.

With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati. He later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector and many of its publicly traded companies.