Yellow Corp., a 99-year-old trucking company that was once a dominant player in its field, halted operations Sunday and will lay off all 30,000 of its workers.

The unionized company has been in a battle with the Teamsters union, which represents about 22,000 drivers and dock workers at the company. Just a week ago the union canceled a threatened strike that had been prompted by the company failing to contribute to its pension and health insurance plans. The union granted the company an extra month to make the required payments.

But by midweek last week, the company had stopped picking up freight from its customers and was making deliveries only of freight already in its system, according to both the union and Satish Jindel, a trucking industry consultant.

While the union agreed not to go on strike against Yellow, it could not reach an agreement on a new contract with the trucking company. The union said early Monday that it had been notified of the shutdown.

“Today’s news is unfortunate but not surprising. Yellow has historically proven that it could not manage itself despite billions of dollars in worker concessions and hundreds of millions in bailout funding from the federal government. This is a sad day for workers and the American freight industry,” said Teamsters President Sean O’Brien in a statement.

While the company is based in Nashville, Tennessee, it is a national company with more than 300 terminals and employees nationwide. Industry insiders said it was primarily an unaffordable amount of debt, more than the cost of the union contract, that did in Yellow.

The company began taking on significant amount of debt 20 years ago in order to acquire other trucking companies.

There are two other national competitors in Yellow’s segment of the trucking market which are also unionized, ABF Freight and TForce. Both were far more profitable in recent years than Yellow, which posted only a narrow operating profit in 2021 and 2022 and a US$9.3 million operating loss in the first quarter.

The closing is bad news not only for its employees and its customers, who generally used Yellow because it offered some of the cheapest rates in the trucking sector, but also for U.S. taxpayers. The company received a US$700 million loan from the federal government in 2020, a loan that resulted in taxpayers holding 30% of its outstanding stock. And the company still owed the Treasury department more than US$700 million according to its most recently quarterly report, nearly half of the long-term debt on its books.

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【救助】jiùzhù bailout the act of helping a person or organization that is in difficulty, usually by giving or giving or lending money

【击垮】jīkuǎ do in kill, ruin utterly

拥有99年历史的行业巨头耶路货运周日停止运营，并将裁员3万人。

这家公司一直在与代表该公司约 2.2万名司机和码头工人的卡车司机工会角力。因为该公司未能为其养老金和医疗保险计划缴费，工会原计划要罢工。然而工会一周前决定暂缓罢工，给公司宽限一个月来支付所需款项。

但据工会和卡车运输业顾问萨蒂什•金德尔称，到上周周中，该公司已停止从客户处取货，只交付系统已接单货物。

虽然工会同意不进行罢工，但未能与该卡车公司就新合同达成协议。工会周一早些时候表示，已接到了停运通知。

卡车司机协会主席肖恩•奥布莱恩在一份声明中说：“今天的消息令人遗憾，但并不意外。历史证明，尽管工人同意让步数十亿美元，也有联邦政府数亿美元的救助金，耶路货运还是经营不善。对工人和美国货运业来说，今天是悲哀的一天。”

耶路公司总部位于田纳西州纳什维尔，是一家全国性公司，在美国各地有300多个码头和大量员工。业内人士表示，耶路货运公司之所以陷入困境，主要是因为难以承受数额超过工会合同的债务。

该公司 20 年前就开始大量举债收购其他卡车公司。

在耶路所处的卡车运输市场，还有另外两家全国性的竞争对手，即ABF Freight和TForce，它们也加入了工会。这两家公司近年来的盈利能力远超耶路，耶路2021年和2022年仅有微薄利润，一季度亏损930万美元。

耶路倒闭不仅对其员工和客户是个打击，对美国纳税人也是个坏消息。该公司2020年从联邦政府获得了7亿美元的贷款，这笔贷款让纳税人持有其30%的流通股。而根据公司最新季报，该公司仍欠财政部7亿多美元，几乎占其账面长期债务的一半。(SD-Agencies)