Auction moves 2nd lot of Yellow terminals

RAMAR Land Corp. (R+L Carriers) landed three terminals valued at $9 million. The carrier took home $211.5 million in real estate in the first auction.

Saia (NASDAQ: SAIA) has a winning bid for 11 sites at $7.9 million across several Western states with a concentration in Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming. It won 17 terminals for $235.7 million earlier this month.

Other bidders included ArcBest (NASDAQ: ARCB) with one property in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, at a value of $7.8 million and Knight-Swift (NYSE: KNX), which got two properties at a little more than $400,000 in Montana and Washington.

FedEx Freight (NYSE: FDX), which wasn’t active in the prior auction, walked away with a winning bid of $22.5 million for one terminal outside of Reno, Nevada.

The sale of Yellow’s leased properties also requires the new tenants to pay costs to cure the current leases as Yellow was delinquent in rent payments and had failed to make required repairs in many locations.

“Winning bids for certain properties include additional payments for cure costs in addition to the cash purchase price noted herein,” the filing read.

There are still 118 leased properties remaining to be sold as well as another 46 terminals that the company owns.

A hearing to approve the sale of the leased properties is scheduled for Jan. 12. Objections to the sales or assurance of future performance are due to the court by Jan. 5.

XPO’s (NYSE: XPO) $870 million bid for 28 properties was the largest winning bid in the first auction. The carrier recently said that it will make repairs and rebrand the terminals prior to reopening them, which will occur throughout 2024 and into 2025. It closed on the acquisition of the properties on Wednesday.

The relaunch of Yellow’s terminals may not upset the current supply-demand balance in the market.

Some of the recently acquired sites represent upgrades to better or bigger locations for carriers and are not full incremental capacity additions. Also, many of the service centers are now in the hands of more price-disciplined carriers versus Yellow, which was known as a low-cost provider. Lastly, some of the future sales will likely include buyers that will repurpose the terminals for use outside of LTL operations.

The court recently approved the sale of Yellow’s 12,000 tractors and 35,000 trailers through auction houses. That liquidation remains ongoing.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden

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