Trucking firm Yellow extends bankruptcy loan talks until next week

By Dietrich Knauth

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Trucking firm Yellow Corp will extend negotiations on a bankruptcy loan until next week, seeking to explore at least two alternative loan proposals that would provide $142.5 million in new cash, the company’s attorney said in court on Friday.

Yellow filed for bankruptcy on Sunday with a loan offer for that amount from private equity firm Apollo, a senior lender to the company before its bankruptcy. The trucking company said earlier this week it was seeking alternative financing from MFN Partners, an investment firm that owns 41% of Yellow’s stock, and Estes Express Lines, a rival in freight trucking.

Yellow is continuing to negotiate those offers, and it has received additional loan offers in the past few days, Yellow’s attorney Pat Nash told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Craig Goldblatt at a Friday court hearing in Wilmington, Delaware. Yellow will likely choose one of the loans, which are “much more favorable” than Apollo’s initial proposal, by early next week, Nash said.

Yellow intends to use its bankruptcy to sell all of its assets, including 12,000 trucks and over 300 shipping service centers.

The new loans would be junior to $1.2 billion in loans from Apollo and the U.S. Treasury Department, which have claimed all of Yellow’s vehicles and real estate as collateral on their loans, Nash said.

Yellow is attempting to get the senior lenders’ consent to take on additional debt, he added.

Yellow has said it believes it can fully repay Apollo and the U.S. Treasury Department.

MFN’s earlier proposal would have put its new loan on an equal footing with Apollo’s roughly $500 million debt, which Apollo opposed. Apollo’s attorney Dennis Dunne said on Friday his client is “perfectly willing” to work with new lenders as long as its collateral rights are not diluted.

Yellow blamed its collapse on a labor dispute with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, and it ceased all operations in the weeks before it filed for bankruptcy. The union, which represents about 22,000 laid-off Yellow employees, said the Nashville, Tennessee-based company “mismanaged” its way to bankruptcy.

Yellow owes the U.S. Treasury over $700 million on a pandemic bailout loan approved by former President Donald Trump’s administration in 2020.