Dive Brief:
- Saia secured 17 terminals at Yellow Corp.’s bankruptcy real estate auction, offering $235.7 million in cash and existing credit to capitalize on a chance to bolster its terminal network and create additional density.
- The LTL carrier’s two most expensive purchases accounted for more than half of its total spending at the auction. Saia bid $71 million for a terminal near Trenton, New Jersey, and $51 million for another in Laredo, Texas, according to court documents.
- The court supervising the bankruptcy case approved Yellow’s first 128 terminal sales Tuesday. Saia’s transactions are expected to close in Q1, the company said in a securities filing.
Dive Insight:
The $71 million former New Penn terminal near Trenton will be Saia’s third in New Jersey, expanding upon its existing operations in Newark and Pennsauken Township, which serves Philadelphia.
The Laredo terminal is Saia’s second in the city — just 3.5 miles away from an existing terminal.
But it’s a far larger facility on a bigger parcel of land, which should allow Saia to scale up its operations in the cross-border shipping hub.
Saia adds Yellow terminals across the country
Before acquiring the Yellow properties, the Johns Creek, Georgia-based carrier already operated 194 terminals, according to its website.
Each new facility adds door and driver capacity to Saia’s network in a bid by the company to stay well ahead of customer demand, said Kevin Szydel, VP of Operations, West, in a Trucking Dive interview last year.
Other carriers also put down eye-popping sums for their most coveted terminals.
Estes Express Lines, which initially valued the full network at $1.525 billion, bid $33 million on an Indianapolis terminal. XPO bid $109.3 million for the former YRC terminal in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, according to court documents.
