Yellow Corp financial woes not economy-wide issue -White House adviser (updated)

Yellow

31/07/2023 14:20

(Adds background in paragraphs 5-6, more Bernstein comments in
7-8)
       WASHINGTON, July 31 (Reuters) - White House economic
adviser Jared Bernstein on Monday said the reported impending
bankruptcy of cash-strapped U.S. trucking company Yellow Corp
 YELL.O  does not indicate an economy-wide problem.
    The company, through a string of mergers, appeared to take
on more debt than it could handle, Jared Bernstein of the
Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview with CNBC.
    "So I think that this looks like a more of a Yellow story
than an economy-wide one by a long shot," Bernstein said.    
    Yellow Corp has ceased operations and is filing for
bankruptcy after failing to reorganize and refinance over a
billion dollars in debt, the Teamsters Union said on Sunday.
    Earlier this month, Yellow averted a threatened strike by
22,000 Teamsters-represented workers and last week said it was
exploring opportunities to divest its third-party logistics
company. 
    The company was the third-biggest U.S. trucker specializing
in the less-than-truckload segment that combines shipments from
different customers in the same trailer.
    "One of the important things in terms of economic
functioning from where I sit kind of overlooking the macro
economy is that many of Yellow's customers saw this coming and
shifted their cargo to other providers," Bernstein said.
    "Nobody likes to see an event like this, as you say,
practically a 100-year old company and iconic American Trucking
Company and the job losses that you cited."

 (Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Mark
Potter)
 ((doina.chiacu@thomsonreuters.com; 202-898-8322;))