U.S. trucking firm Yellow Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Aug. 6 after the company buckled under pressure from a mounting debt load as well as a standoff with an employee union.
“It is with profound disappointment that Yellow announces that it is closing after nearly 100 years in business,” Yellow CEO Darren Hawkins said in an Aug. 6 statement. “Today, it is not common for someone to work at one company for 20, 30, or even 40 years, yet many at Yellow did. For generations, Yellow provided hundreds of thousands of Americans with solid, good-paying jobs and fulfilling careers.”
The Nashville, Tennessee-based nearly 100-year-old company’s bankruptcy filing puts about 30,000 workers at risk at a time when the freight industry is already grappling with slumping volumes.
The company is a dominant player in the “less-than-truckload” segment that hauls cargo for multiple customers on a single truck.
Its clients include large retailers such as Walmart and Home Depot, manufacturers, and Uber Freight. Some companies had paused shipments to Yellow because of fears that they could be lost or stranded if the trucking firm went bankrupt.
Prior to its demise, Yellow, one of the largest U.S. trucking companies, held roughly 8 percent to 10 percent of the market share, per brokerage firm TD Cowen.
Mr. Hawkins blamed the company’s downfall on its botched relationship with the Teamsters union, which represented about 22,000 Yellow workers.
“All workers and employers should take note of our experience with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and worry,” he said. “We faced nine months of union intransigence, bullying and deliberately destructive tactics. A company has the right to manage its own operations, but as we have experienced, IBT leadership was able to halt our business plan, literally driving our company out of business, despite every effort to work with them.”
Mr. Hawkins claimed that the company was on its way to becoming “industry-dominant” when the company’s efforts were thwarted by the IBT union.
