Auto Hauler Jack Cooper to Shut Down After Losing Ford, GM
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Motor vehicle carrier Jack Cooper is set to shutter its doors, according to union officials and public records.
The Kansas City, Mo.-based private company ranks No. 71 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America and No. 2 among motor vehicle carriers.
Founded in 1928, the company had around 2,000 employees, operating nearly 1,300 tractors and a similar number of trailers at the end of 2023, according to TT data. Of those tractors, 857 were company owned and 429 lease-to-own, the data shows.
A spokeswoman for Jack Cooper was not available for comment and company CEO Sarah Amico did not respond to requests for comment by email, but a letter from Amico to employees seen by TT confirmed the carrier would be closing its doors.
The dominoes started to topple when automaker Ford decided in January to end its relationship with Jack Cooper, bringing the curtain down on an approximately 40-year relationship.
Jack Cooper filed Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notices in at least four states as a result, including its home state.
Farley
Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) sought answers from Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford in a letter to CEO Jim Farley. Press officers for the senators did not respond to inquiries as to whether Farley had replied.
Jack Cooper filed a WARN notice with Missouri officials indicating more than 400 employees would be laid off.
The decision also raised the ire of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, with General President Sean O’Brien on Jan. 7 demanding answers from Farley and Ford on why the jobs of more than 1,400 members of the union were being put at risk.
Jack Cooper was the largest remaining unionized auto carrier.
Ford did not return requests for comment.
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Jack Cooper then lost its biggest and oldest customer, GM, at the start of February, according to social media posts by union officials, leading to the decision to fold up the company.
GM did not respond to requests for comment.
Teamsters officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the impact of the GM decision.
GM has engaged National Master Automobile Transporters Agreement signatory carriers, according to a post by Teamsters Carhaul Division Director Avral Thompson. TT reached out to Thompson, but he had not responded by press time.
Jack Cooper engaged with GM for several weeks through Feb. 7 before the automaker pulled its business and the carrier’s management team decided Feb. 8 to shutter operations, according to the letter sent by Amico.
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“Given the loss of our Ford revenue and General Motors’ unilateral decision, Jack Cooper’s management and board of directors are faced with no choice but to ask that our employees not return to work, unless contacted by management,” Amico wrote.
“A few employees will be asked to remain on staff for the next several weeks to ensure an orderly wind-down of Jack Cooper operations,” she added.
Jack Cooper faced dire straits previously, going as far as filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 2019, but the company exited bankruptcy protection in November 2019.
Seeking court protection extinguished around $350 million of debt and removed $2 billion of underfunded pension liability, according to a company history on its website.
Following the exit from bankruptcy and the pandemic, the executive team at Jack Cooper attempted to expand its operations by diversifying out of the auto hauling segment, a strategy that coincidentally may have saved the company from its eventual fate.
Amico
Next Century Logistics, headed by Amico, submitted two bids in the second half of 2023 for less-than-truckload assets of Yellow Corp., which filed for bankruptcy in August 2023.
An initial going-concern bid sought to reanimate a company that had lost all its customers by offering $1.15 billion in cash plus a further $1.5 billion in perpetual preferred stock, a type of debt equity that pays a 7% dividend.
Before Yellow’s demise, the Nashville, Tenn.-based company ranked No. 3 on TT’s list of the largest LTL carriers in North America, and its administrators dismissed the Next Century offer out of hand.
The bid was not viable and did not offer enough cash to abandon the ongoing sale of Yellow assets, arguing it understated the cost of reanimating Yellow and overstated potential revenue and earnings, Yellow’s lawyers said.
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A second bid also failed. The second bid sought 46 owned terminals and 147 leased terminals as well as Yellow rolling stock.
Yellow owned around 12,700 tractors and 42,000 trailers at the end of the second quarter of 2023, according to company documents.
Since then, Yellow’s administrators have raised more than $2 billion by auctioning off the real estate and rolling stock.
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Jack Cooper executives still saw LTL as an opportunity for expansion even after the extraordinarily ambitious Yellow plans were knocked back.
Riggs
In late 2024, the company is understood to have acquired East Moline, Ill.-based Standard Forwarding through Sakaem Holdings, a Tucker, Ga.-based entity controlled by Mike Riggs, Amico’s father and longtime CEO of Jack Cooper.
Standard operated 17 terminals in the Midwest, providing service mostly in Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana and Minnesota. A unionized carrier, 350 drivers at Standard Forwarding ratified a five-year master freight agreement in November.
