Comcar’s final unit will be sold to TFI subsidiary, court documents show

TFI is on the verge of making another acquisition out of the corpse of the bankrupt Comcar, according to court documents filed in connection with Comcar’s bankruptcy.

After having bought flatbed operator CT Transportation and truckload carrier MCT from Comcar in late June, the contentious sale of bulk carrier CCC Transportation brings to a close the breakup of the major assets of Comcar, with TFI buying three of the four major divisions of the company.

TFI subsidiary Bulk Transport Co. East is listed as the actual buyer.

The one non-TFI sale was that of Comcar chemical carrier CTL Transport was sold to Service International in late June, just around the time of the sales of CT and MCT.

The CCC unit of Comcar was originally to be sold to an entity controlled by former Comcar CEO Mark Bostick. The terms of the sale were objectionable enough that the creditors’ committee, in a court filing, likened it to “Tom Sawyer’s swindle.”

But as spelled out in various court actions last week, the sale of CCC to TFI was set to go ahead following a settlement between the creditor’s committee and Bostick.

It appears there were other bidders for the assets, according to the court documents, which said an auction was held August 5. “(T)he bid of the purchasers having been determined through the auction to represent the highest and best offer” for CCC, according to the documents. However, the identity of the other bidders was not disclosed in the court order permitting the sale to Bulk Transport.

The purchase price of the CCC assets, according to court documents, was $4.567,200.

The terms of the settlement with Bostick are complex, but so was what he was trying to do. The deal that the creditors’ committee objected to involved the buying and selling of trailers. In the settlement, the Comcar debtors and Commercial Warehousing Inc. (CWI), a company controlled by Bostick, will split the proceeds from the sales of equipment that will be disposed of as part of the sale of CCC. There also are provisions in the agreement with Bostick concerning real estate in North Carolina, Arkansas and Florida.

A dispute over a roughly half-million dollar arbitration award granted to Bostick coming out of his termination as CEO also was part of the settlement.

As of Sunday afternoon, TFI had not yet announced an acquisition of CCC, presumably because the transaction had not closed yet.

John Kingston