Bidder Emerges to Save Yellow, but She Needs Uncle Sam

Pressure from Congress has been increasingly directed toward the US Treasury in recent weeks to help rescue trucking giant Yellow Corp. after the firm filed for bankruptcy over the summer and shuttered operations. Now, as Yellow's assets are prepped for sale and its former drivers struggle to find work elsewhere, a glimmer of hope has emerged: Per the New York Times, an executive in the trucking industry has cobbled together a plan to get Yellow on its feet again, with ex-employees in the mix and a hoped-for collaboration with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters workers union.

Sarah Riggs Amico, who serves as executive chair for her family's car-hauling company, Jack Cooper, is hoping her scheme can resurrect Yellow and bring back customers who may have already defected to other trucking companies that are better run. "Restructuring Yellow provides an opportunity to bring back tens of thousands of fair-wage, union truck-driving jobs while bolstering America's supply chain," Riggs Amico, a Democratic 2020 Senate candidate in Georgia, tells the Times. "Who wouldn't find that a worthy effort?"

Worthy or not, one entity that might not be on board is the Treasury Department, which, for Riggs Amico's plan to work, would have to agree to let Yellow postpone repayment of its $700 million rescue loan. Aside from legal roadblocks that might stymie such a deal, Treasury may simply want to get its hands on the money owed to it, which would be expedited to next year if Yellow sells off some of its terminals and other assets for cash.

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A source tells the Times that under Riggs Amico's plan, that repayment would instead happen in 2026, and Yellow would also have to borrow more than $1 billion to pay off other creditors and bankruptcy lenders. Employees for the new, leaner Yellow would number about 15,000—the old Yellow employed about 30,000 workers—and Riggs Amico and other female execs would own 51% of the company, per the source. Her bid was sent to management at Yellow on Tuesday; it's not clear if the selling of Yellow assets that was set to begin the same day has begun. (More Yellow Corp. stories.)