Yellow Freight closure thread

I don't understand how the third largest carrier goes belly side up and everyone else is now struggling? All of Yellow's freight should have been gobbled up by the rest of you guys along with a boost in rates. If anything, everyone else should be booming.

 

Problen is volume is dropping faster than capacity is constricting. There was plenty of capacity slack before Yellow failed, so the excess volume was quickly sopped up with minimal hiring, but total daily shipments continue to fall. Can't ship what's not being bought.

 

There was a huge amount of excess capacity in LTL before Yellow went belly up, there wasn't even a blip of a capacity crunch once they stopped. Estes picked up and delivered almost all the freight stuck at terminals and on trailers with no major disruption to their operation.

When the union first threatened a strike two weeks before the operation shut down, over that weekend Yellow lost almost all their national accounts, Wal-Mart, Amazon, the Government, Meijer, Chewy, Crocs, Amor-All and a bunch I am forgetting atm, all of them had strike clauses that allowed them to cancel the contract if a threat of strike or strike action would cause major operation disruption. They all went to other national LTL carriers and it wasn't even a bump in the road for the other carriers to cover it. I think it would take another national carrier and a couple regionals going out before you saw a capacity crunch and actual rate increases that didn't just cause revenue to remain flat.

 

That's terrible to read. I really had no idea that LTL was struggling. Usually a friend of mine that still works at FXF would have something to say about it in a group chat but he's been on the radio silence train for a while. Maybe I should go check on him, I hope he's doing ok. I think by now he'd have 6 years of seniority at FXF on the city board.

 

FXF are going to be an interesting one to watch when they get spun off next year into a standalone company, and how much debt they get put on them by FedEx when they do spin off.

 

With any luck, the ceo of the spinoff won’t be deeply entrenched in the venture capitalist world. Doomed otherwise.

 

FedEx fills out Freight executive team ahead of spin off

 

Unfortunately, most are not understanding this and waiting for this huge boom of freight to roll in. As small as it might sound, when households start budgeting on the slightest purchases it begins to exacerbates. Numbers add up quickly, and less is purchased. When I saw that Standard Forwarding Freight known for LTL Freight loads were shutting its operations hauling into Ontario, Canada and other U.s. Midwest location I knew those who hype up their freight on reloads going back is not full proof. When large carriers like Standard Forwarding Freight start leaving the industry. The redflags are waving higher than most want to believe how difficult things are in these times. Full loads (TL) fell more than year over year 10.7% while LTL saw a 10% drop while Ocean Import Volumes: U.S. containerized import volumes in November 2025 were down 5.4% month-over-month and 7.8% year-over-year. Most never realize that even a 1% drop can affect an enormous North American Freight Industry around $1 Trillion plus annually in a good market.

U.S. market generating around $900 Billion. Whiles Canada over $65 Billion reported in 2024. A drop of just 1% = $10 Billion

That $10 Billion could keep a few thousand small fleets of 25 trucks profitable. If things don't start changing soon the domino effect keeps growing strong!

 

ABF would not be interested the contracts are too far apart, ABF would not get the TForce deal for their current employees and would not want to pay the overhead to convert TForce to NMFA.

 

I reality it shows how bad YRC's rates really were, Amazon and Walmart moved a lot of their shipments to their own trucks, which means Yellow was hauling cheaper then they could... the other carriers picked up what their pricing allowed and now even those volumes are down.