Three years after receiving a questionable $700 million pandemic assistance loan from the Trump administration, YRC–the company that operates the Yellow and Roadway trucking brands–has shut down operations as of Monday morning, putting 30,000 employees out of work, CNN reports.
The Teamsters, which represents 22,000 YRC workers and which agreed to new contract terms last week to help stave off bankruptcy, said it received a notification Sunday. “Today’s news is unfortunate but not surprising. Yellow has historically proven that it could not manage itself despite billions of dollars in worker concessions and hundreds of millions in bailout funding from the federal government. This is a sad day for workers and the American freight industry,” said Teamsters President Sean O’Brien in a statement.
Saying the company was vital for the American economy, the Trump administration approved a fast-tracked $700 million bailout in 2020, sending the money just six weeks after the request was submitted, even though the company was being sued by the federal government on claims it overbilled shipments to the US military. A major investor in YRC, Apollo Investment has close ties to Jared Kushner: it loaned Kushner $184 million in 2017 to facilitate refinancing its loans on Manhattan properties, and later that year, Kushner recommended Apollo co-founder Josh Harris for a White House advisory board.