A second lot of Yellow’s terminals have found new homes, according to a Wednesday filing in a Delaware bankruptcy court. The latest auction for a portion of the defunct less-than-truckload carrier’s leased properties raked in $83 million across 23 locations.
The first wave, which included 130 terminals — only two of which were leased — fetched nearly $1.9 billion.
Carriers that participated in the first auction again hold winning bids.
The recent auction, which included winning bids from just six LTL carriers, occurred Monday and Tuesday. Estes holds the largest bid at $35.3 million for five properties. The carrier previously locked up 24 terminals valued at $248.7 million.
RAMAR Land Corp. (R+L Carriers) landed three terminals valued at $9 million. The carrier took home $211.5 million in real estate in the first auction.
Saia (NASDAQ: SAIA) has a winning bid for 11 sites at $7.9 million across several Western states with a concentration in Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming. It won 17 terminals for $235.7 million earlier this month.
Other bidders included ArcBest (NASDAQ: ARCB) with one property in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, at a value of $7.8 million and Knight-Swift (NYSE: KNX), which got two properties at a little more than $400,000 in Montana and Washington.
FedEx Freight (NYSE: FDX), which wasn’t active in the prior auction, walked away with a winning bid of $22.5 million for one terminal outside of Reno, Nevada.
| Bidder | Terminal count | Purchase price |
| Estes | 5 | $35.3M |
| FedEx Freight | 1 | $22.5M |
| RAMAR Land Corp. (R+L Carriers) | 3 | $9.0M |
| Saia | 11 | $7.9M |
| ArcBest | 1 | $7.8M |
| Knight-Swift | 2 | $417,150 |
The sale of Yellow’s leased properties also requires the new tenants to pay costs to cure the current leases as Yellow was delinquent in rent payments and had failed to make required repairs in many locations.
“Winning bids for certain properties include additional payments for cure costs in addition to the cash purchase price noted herein,” the filing read.
There are still 118 leased properties remaining to be sold as well as another 46 terminals that the company owns.
A hearing to approve the sale of the leased properties is scheduled for Jan. 12. Objections to the sales or assurance of future performance are due to the court by Jan. 5.
XPO’s (NYSE: XPO) $870 million bid for 28 properties was the largest winning bid in the first auction. The carrier recently said that it will make repairs and rebrand the terminals prior to reopening them, which will occur throughout 2024 and into 2025. It closed on the acquisition of the properties on Wednesday.
The relaunch of Yellow’s terminals may not upset the current supply-demand balance in the market.
Some of the recently acquired sites represent upgrades to better or bigger locations for carriers and are not full incremental capacity additions. Also, many of the service centers are now in the hands of more price-disciplined carriers versus Yellow, which was known as a low-cost provider. Lastly, some of the future sales will likely include buyers that will repurpose the terminals for use outside of LTL operations.
The court recently approved the sale of Yellow’s 12,000 tractors and 35,000 trailers through auction houses. That liquidation remains ongoing.
More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden
- Forward Air sells final-mile unit to Hub Group for $262M
- Freight cycle bottom continues to form in November
- XPO ready to deploy 28 new service centers
Chris 158
Great article Todd,
I think you should do a Grinch of 2023 and the Yellow mgmt team as they were offered by Jack Cooper 2 billion to restart the company. They refused or should I say Mr I ran the company into the ground Hawkins refused. Well Mr Hawkins I hope the government doesn’t launch an investigation of where that 700 million dollars went. Even better you gave bonuses to yourself and the other crooks at Yellow. Thanks it’s now going on 6 months and still can’t find work Yellow employees are being black listed by other LTL carriers.
Al
Good more union jobs gone
Meetoo
But who’s going to buy all the TFORCE crap that they’re running into the ground?
John white
Is Jack Cooper Transport bidding on anything to bring back union jobs.
Glen Knox
I owned a trucking company called Tillamook growers Co op the year1980yellow freight they were cutting prices 3 Thousand a load then yellow truck brokerd the freight using our trucks paying 1 Thousand dollars my company took ICC to court spent a million dollars we won the ruling that you can haul any were this set a presentant that effect to day independent owner and operator can haul freight any were all because of yellow freight misdeal all the money we spent put us out of business I have a photo of my trucks in front of the queen Mary if interested will send I am 93 and the lesson I learned is you can win and lose yellow got what it deserved
TODD WALKER
You are part of the culture and environment that doesn’t exist today. Still looking for something owed but not earned I’m a former Yellow employee
Craig
Well now you all know how deep yellow was in dept and yellow didn’t pay their bills. What a shame. They still need to make it right with the employees and pensions from 2010 to 2013 past n present.
Sean Abernethy
I’m a former employee of Holland 26 Years… good to see everything being sold.. maybe soon the employees can be made whole by paying our vacation time and giving us 60 days pay for violating The WARN ACT we the employees gave up Billions in wage and benefits to save our jobs and management still did nothing to invest in the company…