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Dive Summary:
- Estes Express Lines acquired thousands of load bars, airbags, pallet jacks and other miscellaneous equipment in the bankruptcy auction of Yellow Corp., President and COO Webb Estes said in an interview with Trucking Dive.
- The Richmond, Va.-based carrier spent $2 million on the equipment, more than $500,000 off its estimated value, according to a court filing. Estes retrieved it from auctioned terminals around the country, Webb Estes said.
- “Yellow needed help cleaning up the facility because the new buyer didn’t want everything there, so we’re kind of the junk removal,” the company president said. “But we find value in that and we think it’s going to help us, it’s going to help our customers, it’s going to help our employees have the tools they need.”
Dive Insight:
Estes doesn’t immediately need all of the “various minor/quality freight tools, pieces of plant equipment and other miscellaneous components and items,” as the purchase filing describes. Webb Estes even described 5,500 pallet slots as “probably a bit excessive.”
“Some of that will be stock that we have to use in the coming years,” he said. “But we’re excited about it.”
The COO pointed out a logistical advantage to purchasing the equipment from Yellow. Estes didn’t have to distribute the items as far into her terminal network as they were already at Yellow properties across the country.
“Normally when I buy loading bars, I get about 20,000 of them and they’re all in Chicago,” Webb Estes said. “The nice thing is here, they were already all scattered.”
Estes, the second-biggest spender at the bankruptcy auction, also acquired two dozen properties for less than $250 million. Total real estate purchases of nearly $2 billion exceeded Estes’ initial valuation of Yellow’s real estate network by $1,525.