First Yellow Trucks and Trailers Up for Auction March 5
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Selling off the assets of bankrupt less-than-truckload carrier Yellow Corp. is set to take another step when the first rolling stock will be up for auction soon.
Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers said it will kick off the auction at 8 a.m. EST on March 5, offering buyers their pick of trucks and trailers operated by a company 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 sector list.
The timed online auction, one of a number of court-approved auctions Ritchie Bros. is set to hold, will put 3,171 items on the sales block once operated in the eastern part of the United States by Yellow.
Of the items up for sale, some 715 are truck tractors, of which 443 are single-axle cabs, 248 are tandem-axle cabs and 24 terminal tractors.
While Yellow operated a fleet that was older than the industry average, a total of 101 model year 2022 and model year 2023 Volvo VNR 4x2 day cabs are on offer March 5, as well as 92 model year 2022 Peterbilt 579 4x2 and 6x2 day cabs.
Ritchie Bros. has many online auctions coming up that will feature Yellow assets. (Ritchie Bros.)
Drilling down into some of the lots in the first auction, one of the 2023 VNR tractors has only 13,439 miles on the odometer (Lot No. 6995), while a 2022 VNR tractor (Lot No. 7008) has just 34,503 miles. That said, one 2022 cab has 367,685 miles under its hood (Lot No. 7093).
Yellow received a $700 million loan from the U.S. Department of the Treasury through the pandemic-era Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. Some $400 million of that sum was spent on new rolling stock.
Also up for grabs March 5 are 2,193 trailers, with 1,635 of those dry van trailers. By brand, 965 were built by Wabash National, 366 are from Great Dane and 158 are Stoughton Trailers. Of the remainder, 558 are dollies, of which 258 are from Fruehauf and 162 from Wabash.
The next Yellow rolling stock auction is scheduled for March 26 — the Yellow Corp. Central Regional Event. It involves 2,246 items, with 1,682 trailers and 366 tractors. Of the tractors, 213 are single-axle cabs, 136 are tandem-axle cabs and 17 are terminal trucks.
Further auctions are scheduled for April 16 and May 7. How much rolling stock will be on offer was not immediately available. At the time Yellow filed for court protection in August, the company owned around 12,700 tractors and 42,000 trailers.
Visser
Auction prices were stable in the first few weeks of the year, according to Chris Visser, senior analyst and product manager for J.D. Power, as were retail prices. Auction volume in January was unusually high, Visser, the architect of J.D. Power’s commercial vehicle valuation and market intelligence processes, noted in a Feb. 21 commentary.
“Normally, January is a very slow month for auctions, with few sales on the calendar and buyers and sellers largely taking the month off. January 2024 was an exception,” he wrote. “The month saw multiple events featuring units from a large fleet/leasing outfit and other sellers, resulting in volume for the month much higher than historically typical.”
Beyond the rolling stock, Yellow still has 46 owned and 108 leasehold terminals on the auction block.
In a monthly omnibus hearing, Yellow lawyer Allyson Smith said Feb. 14 there was interest in 30-40 more of the owned terminals and around 75 leased terminals.
Smith
At that point, Yellow had closed on 17 transactions involving the sale of 118 owned and 25 leasehold terminals with a value of $1.9 billion.
Kirkland & Ellis’ Smith said Feb. 14 a further six transactions were set to close in the coming weeks, comprising 10 owned terminals and one leasehold terminal, with a value of $71.6 million.
Outside the auctioning off of assets, Yellow’s administrators are in the midst of settling unsecured claims, including pension withdrawal liability claims, Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act claims and personal injury claims.
Yellow’s administrators dispute the size of the withdrawal liability claims from Central States Pension Fund and other multiemployer pension funds.
The administrators on Feb. 10 laid out a timeline for their dispute with the pension funds in court filings. It culminates, if the dispute reaches the bench, in a trial Aug. 5-9 and Aug. 12-16.
Before any of that gets started, a decision on whether the venue for the dispute is the bankruptcy court or arbitration will be made March 6.
The next omnibus hearings are scheduled for March 6 and April 11, according to the bankruptcy court.
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