A bankruptcy court on Sept. 15 approved a timeline for the sale of shuttered less-than-truckload carrier Yellow Corp.’s terminals, trucks and trailers, making some key dates public for the first time.
The first pivotal date is Oct. 13, the bid deadline for Yellow’s trucks and trailers. Bids must be submitted by 5 p.m. EDT Oct. 13, according to court documents.
Yellow owned about 12,700 tractors and 42,000 trailers at the end of the second quarter of 2023, according to company documents.
The vehicles will be auctioned off Oct. 18, if an auction is needed. The winning bidders are scheduled to be unveiled Oct. 23.
Yellow’s lawyers say around 540 potential buyers contacted the company in recent weeks asking about its rolling stock and property assets.
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Yellow ranks No. 13 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America before filing for court protection.
Around 2,000 of the more than 12,000 tractors were bought with $400 million of a $700 million loan provided by the Department of the Treasury in 2020.
Demand should be strong for the late-model trucks taxpayers bought, J.D. Power Senior Analyst & Product Manager Chris Visser told the FTR Transportation Conference 2023 earlier this week. Each is likely to fetch about $100,000, said Visser.
Older trucks made up a much larger percentage of Yellow’s fleet and will only achieve a price of about $20,000, with demand a lot lower, Visser added.
Visser
A Nov. 9 bid deadline has been set by Yellow for selling the 169 terminals as well as other non-rolling stock assets. An auction will then be held Nov. 28 if necessary, and the names of the winning bidders and backup bidders revealed Dec. 1.
On Sept. 13, Estes Express Lines upped the ante in the high-stakes poker game that is determining the fate of the terminals — the company’s most valuable assets.
Richmond, Va.-based Estes Express offered $1.525 billion, the third stalking horse bid for the most valuable part of less-than-truckload carrier Yellow’s assets.
A stalking horse bid is an initial offer on the assets of a bankrupt company that sets a low-end bidding bar so that others cannot make lower bids.
Old Dominion Freight Line previously offered $1.5 billion to acquire the terminals Aug. 18, scuttling a $1.3 billion bid Estes Express put in Aug. 17.
Estes Express ranks No. 14 and Thomasville, N.C.-based ODFL ranks No. 10 on the for-hire TT 100. ODFL comes in at No. 2 in the LTL rankings, while Estes Express is the fifth-ranked carrier in the segment.
The court also gave the final go-ahead for Yellow to receive $142.5 million in loans from MFN Partners and fellow hedge fund Citadel Credit Master Fund, documents show.
Known as debtor-in-possession financing, the loans are meant to see one-time LTL giant Yellow through liquidation of its assets.
MFN Partners is Yellow’s largest shareholder. Miami-based Citadel bought out Apollo Global Management’s $485 million loan to Yellow on Aug. 11.
An additional $70 million loan is also available from MFN if needed, which U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Craig Goldblatt approved Sept. 15 during the U.S. Bankruptcy Court-District of Delaware hearing.
