The failure and shutdown over the weekend of century-old trucker, Yellow Corporation, immediately taking the jobs of 30,000 workers, followed months in which freight shipments fell in the U.S. economy, and particularly those of “LTL” shippers that accept freight loads less than a truckload (LTL). Yellow Corporation was the first and one of the biggest of these, operating more than 12,000 trucks under the names Holland and YRC, as well as Yellow.
Yellow failed and shut down despite having gotten a $700 million loan from the Department of Transportation in 2020—or perhaps, in part because of that loan, on which it had made close to $300 million in principal and interest payments in three years. More recently Yellow had failed to make $50 million in payments due to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ health and pension funds in June and July.
