Yellow Trucking Hits Hitch With Lease Transfers, New Bidder Revealed
Trucking company Yellow Corp.’s road to offloading 178 leases across the U.S. and Canada as part of its bankruptcy process might be getting bumpy.
For each property where Yellow is hoping to transfer its leases to other tenants, Yellow has provided an estimate of the balance that would need to be paid “to be free and clear of its legal responsibilities as a tenant,” CoStar reported.
But so far, one landlord has come forward contesting Yellow’s estimate of what it owes. Yellow says it owes $31K in unpaid rent for a space in Salt Lake City, while its landlord says it owes $2M, most of it in the form of unpaid building maintenance. Similar disputes could come from any of Yellow’s other landlords, CoStar reported.
Estes Express Lines won a bidding war and court approval in September to become the lead bidder on Yellow’s collection of truck terminals for $1.5B, but Reuters reported Monday that a “long-shot” bid from Jack Cooper Transport, one of the country’s largest car transport companies, has entered the fray and is gaining support from the federal government.
Jack Cooper’s bid would involve the rehiring of Yellow’s 30,000 workers but would also require the Department of the Treasury to extend the maturity date from 2024 to 2026 on $700M of pandemic-era loans made to Yellow, Reuters reported.
Yellow's bankruptcy would be the largest in U.S. trucking history, according to FreightWaves.
