Yellow Corp., a struggling trucking company, is shutting down and filing for bankruptcy, the Teamsters said Monday.
An official backruptcy filing is expected for Yellow next week, after years of financial difficulties and growing debt. The U.S. transportation industry and shippers worldwide will be significantly affected by its imminent liquidation.
Today's news is unfortunate but not überraschend. Yellow has proven that it cannot manage itself, despite billions of dollars in worker concessions and hundreds of millions in bailout funding from the federal government. This is a sad day for workers and the American freight industry, said Sean O Brien, General President of Teamsters.
The company's collapse comes just two years after Yellow, formerly known as YRC Worldwide, Inc., received $700 million in pandemic-era loans from the federal government. But the company was in financial trouble long before that, with industry analysts pointing to poor management and strategic decisions dating back decades.
Experts say former Yellow customers and shippers will face higher prices as they take their business to rivals, including FedEx or ABF Freight, which has historically offered the cheapest price points in the industry.
Yellow is one of the nation's largest less-than-truckload carriers. The company, located in Nashville, Tennessee, had 30,000 employees in the country during the same period last year.