Dive Brief:
- Estes Express Lines acquired thousands of load bars, air bags, pallet jacks and other miscellaneous equipment in Yellow Corp.’s bankruptcy auction, President and COO Webb Estes told Trucking Dive in an interview.
- The Richmond, Virginia-based carrier spent $2 million on the equipment, a more than $500,000 discount from its appraised value, according to a court filing. Estes retrieved it from the auctioned terminals across the country, Webb Estes said.
- “Yellow needed help cleaning out the facilities, because the new buyer didn't want all of it there, so we're kind of the junk removal,” the company president said. “But we're finding value in it, and we believe that it's going to help us, help our customers, help our employees have the tools they need.”
Dive Insight:
Estes doesn’t immediately need all of the “various de minimis freight movement/quality tools, pieces of facility equipment and other miscellaneous parts and items,” as the filing describes the purchase. Webb Estes even described the 5,500 pallet jacks as “probably a little excessive.”
“Some of that’s going to be inventory that we have to use over the coming few years,” he said. “But we are excited about it.”
The COO pointed out a logistical advantage to buying the equipment from Yellow. Estes didn’t have to distribute the items as far across its terminal network, since they were already located at Yellow’s properties around the country.
“Normally when I buy load bars, I get like 20,000 of them, and they're all in Chicago,” Webb Estes said. “The cool thing is here, they were already all scattered.”
Estes, the second biggest spender in the bankruptcy auction, also acquired two dozen properties for less than $250 million. A combined nearly $2 billion in property purchases surpassed Estes’ initial $1.525 valuation of Yellow’s real estate network.
