8 Additional Ex-Yellow Terminals Find New Owners
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A further eight terminals once operated by bankrupt less-than-truckload carrier Yellow are set to have new owners, according to court documents.
Yellow’s administrators on June 17 asked Judge Craig Goldblatt of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware to approve the sale of four service centers for a combined $3.75 million.
Goldblatt, meanwhile, on June 18 approved a May 30 request regarding the sale of four other terminals for a combined $6.85 million.
In the most recent application, the administrators said an affiliate of a real estate developer had agreed to buy terminals in Birmingham, Ala., and Columbia, S.C., for a combined $2.2 million on June 3.
Willow Properties is a Wayzata, Minn.-based limited liability company. Willow is an affiliate of Scannell Properties, an Indianapolis-based commercial real estate developer whose projects include logistics facilities for FedEx Ground, DHL and Speedway Logistics among others.
Yellow’s former Neville Island, Pa., terminal is to be bought by an affiliate of Pittsburgh-based mechanical contractor SSM Industries. SSM designs, fabricates and installs heating, ventilation and air conditioning; plumbing; and refrigeration for industrial locations. The company’s 2950 Grand Avenue will pay $1.525 million for the facility, according to the court documents.
In Maine, Yellow’s erstwhile Fairfield facility is to be bought by Ricky Gervais Inc. for $225,000 in a deal inked June 9.
Not to be confused with any entity related to the British comedian of the same name, Ricky Gervais Inc. is a Frenchville, Maine-based for-hire carrier with five power units that specializes in lumber, construction and agricultural haulage, according to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration records. The company also operates a scrap metal division.
Less confusingly, the deals approved June 18 involve a fuel distributor plus engineering and construction companies.
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The biggest of the deals will see an affiliate of Plantsville, Conn.-headquartered construction company Mohawk Northeast buy Yellow’s 46-door Southington, Conn., facility for $2.8 million.
A 68-door Knoxville, Tenn., service center brought in $2.56 million from an affiliate of Knoxville-based engineering company Moldesign.
Yellow’s Port Allen, La., facility will change hands for $1.2 million. The buyer of the 31-door terminal near Baton Rouge is an affiliate of Vicksburg, Miss.-based wholesale fuel and lubricant distributor Waring Oil.
A 12-door facility in Tupelo, Miss., was sold May 27 for $285,000 to S&S Properties of Tupelo, a Mississippi-based limited liability company.
The sale of the properties follows the disposal of seven facilities via private sale in May as the administrators attempt to unload as many terminals as possible.
Initial buyers tended to be major LTL carriers. Scale and density are vital in the LTL space, so an expansive terminal network is crucial. However, they require a great deal of land — something not easy to find near metropolitan areas — and are expensive to build.
Many of the largest LTL players bid aggressively for prime assets in a series of auctions.
The administrators have since turned to private sales for owned terminals and also sought to terminate lease agreements.
Carriers are still interested even though much of the portfolio has been picked off, with the early May sales raising a combined $14.25 million for seven terminals.
The biggest deal, approved May 14, saw a Pontiac, Mich., terminal sold for $10 million to M Way Holding. The affiliate of Moon Star Express bought the 80-door facility about 50 miles from the Belleville, Mich.-based carrier’s headquarters.
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However, the sale of a further three terminal leases to Saia Inc. also announced May 5 was not approved after objections to the wording of the sale order from insurer Chubb Companies. A revised sale order that meets no objections from Chubb was submitted for Goldblatt’s approval June 16, court documents show.
Saia ranks No. 18 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America and No. 6 on the LTL sector list.
Yellow filed for bankruptcy in August 2023. At the time Yellow sought court protection, it was the No. 3-ranked LTL player, owning 169 terminals and holding leases for 149 more.
The breakup of the portfolio offered a major boost for onetime peers of Knoxville, Tenn.-based Yellow.
Estes Express Lines is ranked No. 4 among LTL players after paying $490.2 million to acquire 52 Yellow terminals, which is understood to be the largest single acquisition among carriers.
Early in the bankruptcy proceedings, Estes was in the running to buy all of the terminals after being designated the stalking horse bidder.
Estes ranks No. 11 on the for-hire TT100. Estes President and Chief Operating Officer Webb Estes recently told TT the company expects its terminal door count to top 14,000 by the first or second quarter of 2026. The company added 704 doors in 2024, an increase of 6.1%, for a total of 12,162 doors. At the end of 2023, Estes had 11,458 doors.
