ODFL, Estes Express Battling for Yellow Corp.’s Assets

The dismantling of Yellow Corp. assets has begun, and so has the realignment of the $58 billion less-than-truckload (LTL) landscape.

Richmond, Virgina-based Estes Express, the nation’s fourth-largest LTL carrier with $4.4 billion revenue last year, has made a $1.3 billion bid for all of defunct Yellow’s 160 company-owned terminals.

Estes’ bid has been topped by a $1.5 billion offer for the terminals by LTL industry leader Old Dominion Freight Line. ODFL is required to make a 5% deposit. The bids remain effective for 180 days.

Among Yellow’s creditors is the U.S. government. It effectively owned 30% of Yellow following a $700 million loan to Yellow in the final days of the Trump administration because of Yellow’s perceived importance in military shipments as one of hundreds of trucking companies employed by the Department of Defense.

“Estes felt it was important to try to bring a proposal to the Yellow bankruptcy estate and its creditors that would add some value for the benefit of all case constituents and reduce some of the uncertainty surrounding this bankruptcy process,” Estes told the Journal of Commerce. The bid was first reported by Bloomberg News.

Yellow and Estes, while competitors before Yellow’s bankruptcy announcement on Aug. 7, have an existing relationship. Estes already owns several of Yellow’s terminals and arranged for them to be operated by Yellow in a lease-back arrangement as Yellow scrambled for cash in its final months.

If Estes were able to acquire all of Yellow’s terminals, it would have more than 420 North American terminals – making it the largest LTL carrier by terminal door count in North America.

The dismantling of Yellow, besides idling 22,000 Teamsters and 8,000 non-union workers, is the biggest redistribution of assets in the history of the American trucking industry. The previously largest LTL closure was Consolidated Freightways, which closed on Labor Day 2002.

Yellow moved approximately 50,000 packages a day, according to outside estimates.

Estes figured to be one of the largest beneficiaries of Yellow’s closing before the offer to buy all of Yellow’s terminals. Among other carriers reporting higher load volumes as a result of Yellow’s cessation are FedEx Freight, ABF Freight System, XPO, Saia, TForce Freight and Averitt Express.

Yellow’s cessation occurred in the middle of the peak shipping season for U.S. ground freight. Shippers are in the process of migrating their LTL shipments to an array of other carriers, but at often sharply higher rates.

Those former Yellow shippers can expect higher freight charges. While overall LTL rates are expected to rise around 7% this year, there are lanes where former Yellow freight is fetching as much as 15% increases in rates, according to industry officials.

Trucking terminals, especially those in or near urban areas, have been a gold mine for sales in this century. That is because of changing real estate patterns, tight zoning and environmental requirements and not-in-my-backyard biases against heavy trucks rumbling through neighborhoods.

A 24,000-square-foot former Yellow terminal in Compton, California, was sold to Universal Logistics Holdings for $80 million this year.

Estes has more than 280 freight terminals in the U.S. and Canada, 9,600 tractors and 37,000 trailers. Estes is a powerful freight presence in its home turf of the Southeast, but is looking to enlarge its LTL footprint nationally.

As much as 25% to 50% of Yellow’s freight could go to carriers outside the top 10 largest LTL providers, according to a research note by Goldman Sachs.

Reuters reported that Citadel and hedge fund MFN Partners – which owns 42% of Yellow’s stock – will provide $142.5 million in bankruptcy financing to Yellow. The financing agreement estimated a six-month auction period for Yellow’s assets.