Sale of Remaining 112 Yellow Terminals to Start Oct. 1
The sale of the last of the freight terminals owned or leased by bankrupt less-than-truckload carrier Yellow Corp. is set to start Oct. 1, according to a court filing.
A total of 47 owned terminals and 65 leased properties with more than 3,100 and 4,000 doors, respectively, will be on offer, the filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware showed.
The sale process is expected to close as early as January.
Beginning Oct. 1, nonbinding written indications of interest will be accepted, with the last submissions allowed Oct. 18. Binding bids from qualified entities will then be accepted, although a deadline has yet to be set.
The biggest of the owned properties up for sale is the 426-door, 103.6-acre facility in Chicago Heights, Ill., followed by the 304-door, 51.2-acre terminal in Maybrook, N.Y.
The largest of the leased properties on offer is the 325-door, 54.2-acre facility in Bloomington, Calif., followed by the 193-door, 55.81-acre site in Kansas City, Mo. A total of 16 of the leased properties are in California, or 25%.
Triple Play
Three owned terminals are on the sales block in Ohio, Louisiana and Alabama, respectively, the most in any one state.
Judge Craig Goldblatt in August approved a plan that retained real estate broker CBRE to sell the remaining properties. The funds raised would pay back unsecured creditors.
Yellow’s secured creditors already have been paid back, including the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which loaned the company $700 million during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those creditors received the money Yellow owed them after earlier sales of real estate and rolling stock — auctions that brought in more than $2 billion in funds.
Two rounds of auctions raised $1.88 billion and $82.89 million through the sale of 128 and 23 of Yellow’s owned and leased terminals, respectively. Auctions of Yellow’s tractors and trailers have since followed.
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Sales of the rolling stock kicked off in March. At the time Yellow filed for court protection in August 2023, the company owned around 12,700 tractors and 42,000 trailers.
Ahead of the latest property auctions, recent weeks have seen Yellow’s debts increase substantially.
Goldblatt on Sept. 13 ruled the estate must pay pension funds for halting payment into employees’ retirement plans in what are known as withdrawal liability claims.
Central States Pension Fund argues the Yellow estate owes the pension fund about $5 billion in contributions because of the company’s collapse and inability to continue payments.
Goldblatt did not set an amount the estate must pay, but a further 10 multiemployer pension funds are seeking redress from the bankrupt carrier.
A number of Teamsters union locals also have claims against the estate.
An inability to settle a dispute with the Teamsters, which represented 22,000 Yellow employees, was one reason Yellow shuttered so abruptly at the end of July 2023. Yellow argued the impasse scared off customers.
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Goldblatt ruled Sept. 4 that Teamsters President Sean O’Brien could be deposed as the court seeks to settle up to $244 million in Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act claims. A motion from the Teamsters to block the deposition was denied Sept. 24. The union is mulling whether to appeal the Sept. 4 ruling.
The Sept. 13 ruling likely indicates little will remain for Yellow shareholders, including hedge fund Boston-based MFN Partners, which acquired a more than 40% stake in the carrier ahead of the company seeking court protection.
Before Yellow’s demise, it ranked No. 13 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America and No. 3 on the LTL list, behind only FedEx Freight and Old Dominion Freight Line.
XPO Inc. and Estes Express Lines moved up a spot in the 2024 rankings as a result after picking up ex-Yellow terminals. XPO came out top of the table in the first auction, paying $870 million for 26 owned properties. Estes, which submitted two stalking horse bids for all the terminals, was the biggest spender in the second auction.
Estes President and Chief Operating Officer Webb Estes told TT in an exclusive interview in July the Richmond, Va.-based carrier expects its terminal door total to jump more than 12% this year to more than 12,750.
