Watch Now


Yellow ceases operations

Documents show company to make Monday announcement

A bankruptcy filing could be announced Monday. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

Less-than-truckload carrier Yellow Corp. ceased all operations at 12 p.m. Sunday, according to a notice on the gates at its terminals.

Separate internal documents showed the procedures for closing the facilities as well as “talking points” to be used when informing union employees not to show up for their shifts. The documents indicated the company plans to issue a public statement Monday updating “the state of the company and the operation.”

On Friday, Yellow (NASDAQ: YELL) laid off most of its nonunion employees in areas like customer service, information technology and sales. The company stopped making pickups earlier in the week and has been delivering the remaining freight in its network ahead of what appears to be a permanent closure.  

After months of negotiations with its Teamsters workforce, the carrier has been unable to reach terms over proposed operational changes it has said were required for its survival. In a breach of contract lawsuit filed last month regarding the matter, the company said it could be out of cash as soon as mid-July.


Most are expecting Yellow to announce it will file for bankruptcy Monday.

Representatives from Yellow had not commented by the time of this publication.

88 Comments

  1. Dyna Sluyter

    This smells like the Hostess bankruptcy- Business still making slim profits with hundreds of millions of $$$ of assets to profitably liquidate!

  2. Dawn Harrop

    Yep, and in Columbus Ohio they didn’t even tell the employees. Just put barricades going into the parking lots and blocked the truck entrance. Not notice, no phone call, nothing, and I have pictures of everything. The terminal manager is to big of a coward to face his employees.

  3. Denise Compton

    What “months of negotiations” went on with the Teamsters?? This all started a month ago…a month ago! Hey, but at least the nonunion employees got a severance package including any vacation time owed. The Teamster employees got absolutely nothing and will more than likely be lucky to get their last two paychecks.

  4. Richard Davis

    So instead of taking a pay cut or whatever else you need to do so you can keep your job, just get laid off and not have a job.

  5. Ruben

    What a shame. Terrible management, no vision. As a former UPSer I can remember talking to Yellow drivers talking about the pay cuts they agreed to take to keep the company going. All that for nothing because of bad management decisions.

  6. J. W. Hill

    Funny how non union companies are thriving & paying more w better benefits than union companies. I am a retired teamster w over 25 years paid in. I have seen hundreds of trucking companies go under & not one has been union related as the main reason to close.

Comments are closed.

Todd Maiden

Based in Richmond, VA, Todd is the finance editor at FreightWaves. Prior to joining FreightWaves, he covered the TLs, LTLs, railroads and brokers for RBC Capital Markets and BB&T Capital Markets. Todd began his career in banking and finance before moving over to transportation equity research where he provided stock recommendations for publicly traded transportation companies.