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Yellow Corporation

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Yellow Corporation

Yellow Corporation was an American transportation holding company headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas. Its subsidiaries included national less than truckload (LTL) carrier YRC Freight; regional LTL carriers New Penn, Holland, and Reddaway; and freight brokerage HNRY Logistics. From 2006 to February 2021, Yellow was known as YRC Worldwide.

At 12:00 pm on Sunday, July 30, 2023, the company ceased operations due to financial problems. On August 6, 2023, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It owes $730 million to the federal government, which owns 30% of the corporation, as a result of the $700 million pandemic loan Yellow received in 2020. It had 30,000 employees, 22,000 of whom were members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The financial problems existed since 2000, when the company started taking on large debt loads while acquiring competitors but failed to achieve efficiencies of integrating the separate companies into one network, with the company stating that their union contracts were one factor blocking this integration. The company has only had three profitable quarters since 2009. An auction for the Yellow properties took place in November 2023.

In 1906, Grover Cleveland "Cleve" Harrell (1884–1942) started what was to become the Yellow Cab Company of Oklahoma with a horse-drawn hack and a team of horses in Oklahoma City. After a year, he bought a Model T Ford. People were willing to pay more to ride in an automobile. After World War I, he bought two more cars and hired a relief driver. In 1918, Harrell painted one of his cars yellow. Although ridiculed by other cab drivers, he was hauling more passengers than anyone else, so he painted all his cars yellow and business boomed. Harrell trademarked the name Yellow Cab in Oklahoma. Later, John Hertz copied the Yellow Cab in Chicago and obtained the national trademark for the use of the name.

Harrell's older brother, A. J. Harrell (1883–1972), had followed him to Oklahoma City and been successful in the operation of a horse and mule business during World War I. Cleve needed extra capital for expansion, so he formed a partnership with A. J. The company's offices were moved to 113 S. Santa Fe, and their younger brother, Marvin Harrell, and their father, Jake Harrell, were added to the payroll. The partnership started a cross-country bus line connecting Oklahoma City and Tulsa, which was later sold to Pickwick Bus Company of Tulsa. Cleve established the Capital Hill Bus Lines for the southern part of Oklahoma City, which he successfully operated for several months before selling it to the Oklahoma Street Railway Company.

When oil was discovered in the Oklahoma City area, mules were needed for work in digging slush pits, so the Harrell brothers bought mules and, in 1929, established the Yellow Transit Freight Lines to serve small manufacturers for whom freight was slow and express rates were prohibitive. By 1933, with the New Deal and the NIRA, most businesses came under government regulation in an attempt to increase employment. Cleve, together with taxicab operators from other parts of the country, met in Washington, D.C. to formulate a regulatory code, but were not successful. Cleve then devised his own code and got government confirmation.

About this time, the Harrell brothers dissolved the partnership. Cleve took the taxicabs in the trade-out, as well as the Yellow Cab Dynamic Gasoline Company. He sold the taxicab business in 1940 to Eddie Fuller, who operated the Y and Y Cab Co., and maintained ownership of the gasoline company until his death on December 3, 1942. A. J. took control of the freight lines, which he operated for many years. The company remained small until 1952, when an ownership group led by George E. Powell Sr. bought the freight company. During this time, Yellow helped pioneer the concept of consolidating small freight shipments into trailer loads.

In 1968, the company name was changed from Yellow Transit Freight Lines to Yellow Freight System Inc. During the deregulation of interstate trucking in the 1980s, Yellow Freight System embarked on a massive restructuring by creating new distribution centers across the country to better serve customers. The company changed its name to Yellow Corporation in 1992, when it created a parent company, with Yellow Transportation, Inc. as its largest division.

In December 2003 Yellow Corporation, at the time the second largest LTL carrier in the US, acquired the largest, Roadway Corporation, for US$1.05 billion. Roadway had been spun off from its former parent, holding company Roadway Services Inc. (RSI), in 1995 and operated as an independent, publicly traded company since then. The purchase included Roadway's national operation, Roadway Express, northeast regional LTL subsidiary, New Penn, and Canadian LTL operation, Reimer Express. A new holding company, Yellow Roadway Corporation, was formed based at Yellow's headquarters in Overland Park to serve as the parent company for both Roadway Corp. and Yellow Corp.

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