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Dive Brief:
- Estes Express Lines found a bargain at Yellow Corp.’s bankruptcy estate auction. to enhance its terminal capacity for cross-border shipments into Canada, President and COO Webb Estes said in an interview with Trucking Dive.
- Estes doubled door capacity in Detroit. It quadrupled its doors in Buffalo, New York. and added a facility in Burlington, Vermont, nearby Montreal, Estes said. The carrier also bought a lease it had at a terminal in Tacoma, Washington, he said.
- “We really focused on the Canadian border,” Estes said. “We focused on gateways, because we’ve seen a lot of growth since Yellow came out there, and we think we have a lot more opportunity to grow in Canada.”
Dive Insight:
Richmond, Va.-based Estes, the top pursuit horse bidder at the auction, had more than one target with about $285 million in real estate and lease purchases from Yellow.
Case in point: None of its five most expensive acquisitions were among the Canadian-focused expansions Estes mentioned in the interview.
Estes acquires two dozen Yellow terminals
Yellow leasehold acquisitions
But that only points to the unique opportunity presented by the Yellow bankruptcy auction, which executives and analysts have described as “once in a lifetime.”
In Buffalo, Estes will go from 40 doors to 170 doors, the company president said.
Increased cross-border capacity at Yellow’s acquired terminals will help the carrier navigate situations where shipments must wait for customs clearance, he said.
“Everybody ran their own race,” Estes said of the auction. “We bought a lot of the strategic stuff we needed. But we tried to do it efficiently, from a cost perspective. I didn’t want to spend forever on it. So we focused on a few key things. One was international.”