The Taxpayers Bailed Out Yellow Trucking. It Went Bankrupt Anyway.

August 14, 2023

by Doug French Mises.org

After ninety-nine years in business, Yellow, one of the nation’s biggest trucking companies, shut down. The company has more than twelve thousand trucks and employed thirty thousand, with twenty-two thousand of those jobs held by Teamsters.

If you are a taxpayer, you know all this, your government being a 29.6 percent shareholder of Yellow and all. The Trump administration’s Coronavirus, Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act dished out $500 billion to businesses, states and municipalities as a result of the coronavirus. Yellow Corporation received $700 million of the $735.9 million set aside for national security loans.

The loan had two tranches, tranche A was $300 million to cover union healthcare and pension liabilities, plus lease and interest payments.