Yellow

A curated selection of the top 10 logistics and supply chain stories from 2024, reflecting key trends and themes identified by LM Group News Editor Jeff Berman—offering insights beyond popularity metrics to spotlight meaningful industry developments.

Yellow, which ceased operations last Aug. 7, is asking to place its remaining terminals and other vacant properties into a real estate investment trust (REIT) that could be used to raise money for creditors.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has won what the union calls “a major victory” in a breach of contract lawsuit against Yellow Corp. Unfortunately for about 24,000 Teamsters who lost their jobs when Yellow ceased operations last August, the victory arrives about nine months too late.

The liquidation of Yellow Corp., once the largest less-than-truckload (LTL) and the nation’s 13th-largest trucking company when it ceased operations last August, has continued to prove that Yellow’s assets were valuable even without operating as a functioning trucking company.  

The cessation of Yellow continues to have repercussions throughout the $58 billion LTL market. Now, a shuffling of the capacity equation is causing strategic changes, and shippers need to adapt to the new alignment of resources to find operational success.

It’s hardly much consolation to its 30,000 or so former workers—or shippers left without Yellow’s reliable capacity for 49,000 less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments a day—but Yellow says it has repaid in full a $700 million loan approved for the struggling trucker in the final days of the Trump administration.

Shippers are the main beneficiaries of new freight audit and payment data. They’re now tapping into more auxiliary services such as freight bidding, modal analysis and international services—and the most savvy operations are benefiting by realizing lower, better-managed freight bills with analysis thrown in for good measure

About a dozen trucking companies bought properties at a court-supervised auction that resold about three-fourths of Yellow’s properties for a total of just under $1.9 billion.

In an annual tradition, LM takes a look at the top news in logistics and supply chain posted in the last year on Logistics Management. The editorial team presents the top 10 logistics stories of 2023.

Rapidly diversifying truckload carriers are riding out a slump in long-haul ground freight. These “durable, diversified, and resilient” plans are paying off for those TL carriers willing to change with the economic headwinds facing the sector.

A bankruptcy court in Delaware has approved plans by the administrators of bankrupt less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier Yellow Corp. to use auctioneers to sell the company’s rolling stock. Yellow filed for bankruptcy on Aug. 6 and ceased operations as the nation’s 13th-largest overall trucking company and third-largest LTL operator.

The first big winner in the bankruptcy dismantling of Yellow Corp. is less-than-truckload (LTL) rival, Richmond, Va.-based Estes Express, the nation’s fourth-largest LTL carrier.

Richmond, Va.-based Estes Express, the nation’s fourth-largest LTL carriers with $4.4 billion revenue last year, has made a $1.3 billion bid for all of defunct Yellow’s 160 company-owned terminals.

With the dust settling from the exit of Yellow Corp. in the less-than-truckload (LTL) market, following its Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing earlier this month, various industry stakeholders have taken time since then to assess what Yellow’s departure, as well as its 8%-to-9% sector market share, means for LTL and the freight transportation sector, too.

In this podcast, Jeff Berman, Group News Editor for Logistics Management and the Peerless Media Supply Chain Group, interviews Glenn Koepke, GM, Network Collaboration, for Chicago-based FourKites, a provider of real-time tracking and visibility solutions across transportation modes and digital platforms.