One of the nation’s largest trucking companies has announced its abrupt closure, coming as an apparent shock to employees amid ongoing union worker negotiations.
Yellow, a 99-year-old corporation employing about 30,000 people, halted operations permanently, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. Of those workers, 22,000 are currently active members of Teamsters.
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“Teamsters have kept this company afloat for more than a decade through billions of dollars in wage, pension and work-rule concessions,” a Teamsters union spokesman said.
“Yellow couldn’t manage itself, and it wasn’t up to Teamsters to do it for them.”
News of the Nashville, Tennessee-based company’s shuttering, and its plans to file for bankruptcy, follows a litany of corporate mergers — which left the business in steep financial debt and made its future in the industry unclear in recent months.
Yellow, prior to its closure, ran about 12,000 trucks moving freight across the U.S. for its large-scale clients, such as Walmart and Home Depot, as well as smaller businesses.
The company faced downfalls, however, despite successfully negotiating union concessions and a government bailout, due to issues stemming from delivering consistency among customers and padding investors’ profit margins.
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Yellow’s closure leaves a major void in the trucking industry, with some of its former customers having already begun to shift their orders from the nearly-century-old company to its rivals.
As it stands, the U.S. Treasury claims ownership of 30% of Yellow’s stock shares, rounding to $.71 as of the close of market on Friday.
