#Yellow Corporation

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Three years after receiving a $700 million pandemic-era lifeline from the federal government, the struggling freight trucking company Yellow is filing for bankruptcy.

After monthslong negotiations between Yellow’s management and the Teamsters union broke down, the company shut its operations late last month, and said on Sunday that it was seeking bankruptcy protection so it could wind down its business in an “orderly” way.

“It is with profound disappointment that Yellow announces that it is closing after nearly 100 years in business,” the company’s chief executive, Darren Hawkins, said in a statement. Yellow filed a so-called Chapter 11 petition in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

The downfall of the 99-year-old company will lead to the loss of about 30,000 jobs and could have ripple effects across the nation’s supply chains. It also underscores the risks associated with government bailouts that are awarded during moments of economic panic.

Yellow, which formerly went by the name YRC Worldwide, received the $700 million loan during the summer of 2020 as the pandemic was paralyzing the U.S. economy. The loan was awarded as part of the $2.2 trillion pandemic-relief legislation that Congress passed that year, and Yellow received it on the grounds that its business was critical to national security because it shipped supplies to military bases. Government watchdogs have scrutinized the loan because of the company’s financial turmoil and close ties to the Trump administration, which awarded the loan.

Since then, Yellow changed its name and embarked on a restructuring plan to help revive its flagging business by consolidating its regional networks of trucking services under one brand. As of the end of March, Yellow’s outstanding debt was $1.5 billion, including about $730 million that it owed to the federal government. Yellow has paid approximately $66 million in interest on the loan, but it has repaid just $230 of the principal owed on the loan, which comes due next year.

The fate of the loan is not yet clear. The federal government assumed a 30% equity stake in Yellow in exchange for the loan. It could end up assuming or trying to sell off much of the company’s fleet of trucks and terminals. Yellow aims to sell “all or substantially all” of its assets, according to court documents. Mr. Hawkins said the company intended to pay back the government loan “in full.”

The White House declined to comment.

Yellow estimated that it has more than 100,000 creditors and more than $1 billion in liabilities, per court documents. Some of its largest unsecured creditors include Amazon, with a claim of more than $2 million, and Home Depot, which is owed nearly $1.7 million.

Yellow is the third-largest small-freight trucking company in a part of the industry known as “less than truckload” shipping. The industry has been under pressure over the last year from rising interest rates and higher fuel costs, while customers have been reluctant to accept higher prices.

Those forces collided with an ugly labor fight this year between Yellow and the Teamsters union over wages and other benefits. Those talks collapsed last month and union officials soon after warned workers that the company was shutting down.

After its bankruptcy filing, company officials placed much of the blame on the union, saying its members caused “irreparable harm” by halting its restructuring plan. Yellow employed about 23,000 union employees.

“We faced nine months of union intransigence, bullying and deliberately destructive tactics,” Mr. Hawkins said. The Teamsters union “was able to halt our business plan, literally driving our company out of business, despite every effort to work with them,” he added.

In late June, the company filed a lawsuit against the union, asserting it had caused more than $137 million in damages by blocking the restructuring plan.

The Teamsters union said that Yellow’s executives unjustly blamed the union for the demise of the company, which had been “plagued with financial trouble for nearly two decades,” officials said in a statement.

“Teamster families sacrificed billions of dollars in wages, benefits and retirement security to rescue Yellow,” said Sean O’Brien, the union’s general president. “The company blew through a $700 million government bailout.” Calling Yellow’s top executives “dysfunctional” and “greedy,” he blamed them for failing to “take responsibility for squandering all that cash.”

The bankruptcy could create temporary disruptions for companies that relied on Yellow and might prompt more consolidation in the industry. It could also lead to temporarily higher prices as businesses find new carriers for their freight.

“Those inflationary prices will certainly hurt the shippers and hurt the consumer to a certain extent,” said Tom Nightingale, chief executive of AFS Logistics, who suggested that prices would probably normalize within a few months.

In late July, Yellow began permanently laying off workers and ceased most of its operations in the United States and Canada, according to court documents. Yellow has retained a “core group” of about 1,650 employees to maintain limited operations and provide administrative work as it winds down. Yellow said it expected to pay about $3.4 million per week in employee wages to operate during bankruptcy, which “may decrease over time.” None of the remaining employees are union members, the company said.

The company also sought the authority to pay an estimated $22 million in compensation and benefit costs for current and former employees, including roughly $8.7 million in unpaid wages as of the date of filing.

Yellow had readily accessible funds of about $39 million when it filed for bankruptcy, which it said would be insufficient to cover its wind-down efforts, and it expected to receive special financing to help support the sale process and payment of wages.

Jack Atkins, a transportation analyst at the financial services firm Stephens, said that Yellow’s troubles had been mounting for years. In the wake of the financial crisis, Yellow engaged in a spree of acquisitions that it failed to successfully integrate, Mr. Atkins said. The demands of repaying that debt made it difficult for Yellow to reinvest in the company, allowing rivals to become more profitable.

“Yellow was struggling to keep its head above water and survive,” Mr. Atkins said. “It was harder and harder to be profitable enough to support the wage increases they needed.”

David P. Leibowitz, a Chicago bankruptcy lawyer who represents several trucking companies, said Yellow had found itself in a “perfect storm, and they have not managed that perfect storm very well.”

The company’s financial problems fueled concerns. It lost more than $100 million in 2019 and was being sued by the Justice Department over claims that it defrauded the federal government during a seven-year period. Last year it agreed to pay $6.85 million to settle the lawsuit.

Congressional oversight committees have scrutinized the company’s relationships with the Trump administration. President Donald J. Trump tapped Mr. Hawkins to serve on a coronavirus economic task force, and Yellow had financial backing from Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm with close ties to Trump administration officials.

Democrats on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis wrote in a report last year that top Trump administration officials had awarded Yellow the money over the objections of career officials at the Defense Department. The report noted that Yellow had been in close touch with Trump administration officials throughout the loan process and had discussed how the company employed Teamsters as its drivers.

In December 2020, Steven T. Mnuchin, then the Treasury secretary, defended the loan, arguing that had the company been shuttered, thousands of jobs would have been at risk and the military’s supply chain could have been disrupted. He predicted that the federal government would eventually turn a profit from the deal.

“Yellow had longstanding financial problems before the pandemic, was not essential to national security and thus should never have received a $700 million taxpayer bailout from the Treasury Department,” Representative French Hill, Republican of Arkansas and a member of the Congressional Oversight Commission, said in a statement. “Years of poor financial management at Yellow has resulted in hard-working people losing their jobs.”

#us politics #news #the new york times #2023 #donald trump #conservatives #republicans #trump administration #yellow corporation #teamsters union #unions #union workers #workers union #bankruptcy #chapter 11 #Darren Hawkins #U.S. Bankruptcy Court #coronavirus relief #ppp loans #department of treasury #government bailouts #Sean O’Brien #House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis #steve mnuchin #department of defense #rep. French Hill #Apollo Global Management

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

#talkin #tik tok #the history channel #war crimes #antisemitism #erich von däniken #disney #hearst media #hearst corporation #william randolph hearst #yellow journalism #wilhelm utermann #nazis

[eviedesilly]

I'M FINALLY DRAW THEM YIPPIEEEE (I'M SORRY ABOUT DAVE..)

#undertale yellow #undertale #yellow #toontown corporate clash #ttcc #ttcc fanart #axis 014 #uty #uty guardener #moray uty #dave brubot #major player

[severants]

DOODLESSS

#corporate clash #axis undertale yellow #axis uty #uty axis #axis 014 #undertale yellow axis #undertale yellow #uty #ILY AXIS #uhm ultrakill vaguely #Doods #lots of em #Mettaton #‘too? #Sorry mettaton pilled me went feral and it kick started my love for undertale!! #Catch on Twitter also #I love it #twitter is giving me my stability back #who wouldn’t guessed those words would leave anyones mouth. #Horrifyingly scary #simon’s art

[staincastle]

⠀⠀⠀★ rina's message is here! resident evil headers

#headers #resident evil #resident evil headers #re village #re 2 #re 4 #umbrella corporation #umbrella corporation headers #black #black headers #yellow #yellow headers #re 3 #white #white headers #red #red headers #minimalist #minimalist headers #game #game haders #movie #movies headers #aesthetic #aesthetic headers #raccoon city headers #resident evil village

[st4rstudent]

Yay!

#clemart #ttcc #toontown corporate clash #mac opsys #winn dos #prethinker #brian ttcc #desk jockey #brianbot #ignore the colors being off. this is actually colored in cmyk and i have to save it in something other than a png and then change it back #so there's this subtle orange yellow overlay. everyone but prethinker seems to work well in cmyk #anyways this is actually part of a little personal project but i'll share bc of 1.3 update anniversary #managers this managers that.. umm ackusually this is mac and winn time (light hearted)

[funkily]

buck ruffler the duck shuffler (toontown corporate clash) stimboard with casino, glitter, and neon stims for @toonietoon36 !

🎰🎰🎰|💸💸💸|🎲🎲🎲

#toontown #buck ruffler #toontown corporate clash #ttcc #casino stim #neon stim #glitter stim #red stim #black stim #green stim #yellow stim #stimboard #stimboards #funkboard #hands tw #best boards

[prestigethrow]

Certified girlypop who could bite my head off probably.

#toontown #toontown corporate clash #ttcc #toonblr #her eye looks yellow on the model. i think it pops #roxy lalonde type beat yfm

[binah-beloved]

distorted/EGO manifested Binah with black feathers growing in her hair. that's the good stuff.

#project moon #lobotomy corporation #library of ruina #binah #binah lobcorp #binah library of ruina #and also eyes #many big yellow eyes in her hair #and perhaps a lantern #or a scale #i'm sure you see where i am going with this #distorted or EGO manifested binah using it to protect you #aka binah goes feral

[livingjoke]

It's amazing how my hyperfixations have completely redefined umbrellas for me

#the umbrella academy #tua #how i met your mother #himym #resident evil #gotham #dc #batman #the penguin #oswald cobblepot #ted mosby #tracy mcconnell #yellow umbrella #umbrella corporation #albert wesker #doctor who #seventh doctor

[offshore-brinicle]

All you truly need to know about me and my tastes is that not only are Yi Sang and Dongbaek my favorite characters, the Tiphereths/Lisa and Enoch are my other all-time favorite Project Moon characters. Doomed siblings that forever haunt me

#project moon #Limbus Company #Lobotomy Corporation #if you think about it both duos are very similar #I won't explain that #even associated with yellow #lcb Yi Sang #lcb Dongbaek #Tiphereth ProjMoon #Enoch lobcorp #Lisa lobcorp

[theclod3215]

I almost forgot to add these 🙃

I wanna draw Faroe so bad but I can’t draw toddlers :””)

#Arthur is never having a good time #the second is an older corporeal! John design #art #fanart #my art #traditional media #sketchbook dump #malevolent podcast #malevolent #john x arthur #john malevolent #arthur lester #Faroe #faroe lester #the king in yellow #cw swearing #soft #these two literally infect my sketchbook

[northern-passage]

very interested to know if anyone would ever leave a review like this on a game that had all cishet characters... is that pandering to the "cisgender" narrative? or is it only pandering when it's the "transgenders"? 🤔 what makes it pandering? just because it's for an audience that's not you? because it's for a group of people you don't personally like? what makes you so special that only your stories are the ones you deem worthy of being told?

#and can you tell me what it is about trans people just existing that breaks your immersion? quickly #'i can excuse the demon ghosts from another dimension and glowing yellow eyes and fire magic and blood alchemy #and a god monster speaking in the mc's head. but i draw the line at the transgenders' #funniest review i've gotten in a while #right up there next to the 'this game is lacking representation because there are no femme women that wear makeup' #i also really don't agree that there are 'cliche' trans characters #there arent enough trans characters or storylines that exist in mainstream media for there to be any cliches #beyond like. homophobic& transphobic stereotypes. lol #and whos fault is that i wonder.... #honestly the first half of this review isn't even bad like it's fair criticism but they had to come in w the steel chair #talking about the 'transgender' in quotes #2 b clear 'pandering' is for like disney corporation making shitty movies and introducing their 20th first gay character #not a independent trans creator writing trans characters for a trans audience. lol #personal #transphobia #yeah i'll tag it cus it's annoying lmfao

[honeydewcorporation]

New version of me! Might change my pfp, might not~

#sapphic #honeydew corporation #character design #digital art #art #my art #anthro #moth art #four arms #antlers #pants #purple #yellow #pink #angel girl #angel #angelcore #angel art #bug yuri

[severants]

Hydra design by my friend zards in clash Doodle dump, mettaton is cog coded, and I drew them as one. Hence this post being worthy of the ttcc tag

#undertale yellow #mettaton #corporate clash #Marlet undertale yellow #axis #toontown corporate clash #Where am I??? #I’ll Artdump my phighting stuff #I have to archive screenshots for someone so I’m just doing stuff in between #I posted this on my priv twt since main is locked #Toontown corporate clash #toontown #Simon’s scraps

[curapicas]

This is a beautiful moment where in between Luffy literally ordering his heart to keep beating to fight on, he closes his eyes and lets the power flow through him. Rarely Nika ever looks this peaceful and is. is he turning yellow. Oh my god it's neon what /is/ going on what the f-

uh. And it finishes with his eyes still closed gearing up for the fight and you can feel the confidence throuhought the whole movement

#one piece #I find it cute the other colours are yellow and green bc they remind me of zoro and sanji #one frame isn't enough I need to consume the entire scene #one piece watch #this was the closest his hair ever got to actually looking like hair meanwhile he's in the middle of losing his corporeal form #ep 1072