Dive Brief:
- Estes Express Lines spent $22 million to acquire another seven Yellow Corp. leases of Estes-owned properties last month, according to bankruptcy court documents.
- The terminals are in Charlotte, North Carolina; Milwaukee; Minneapolis; Joliet, Illinois; Rockford, Illinois; South Bend, Indiana; and Eugene, Oregon. Estes has now acquired a total of 29 terminals and 10 leases from the bankrupt carrier.
- Estes is considering subleasing the Joliet facility, because it already has another 195-door terminal nearby, President and COO Webb Estes told Trucking Dive in an interview Monday. It plans to move into the six others from smaller nearby facilities in the next nine months.
Estes' 7 latest terminal lease acquisitions
Dive Insight:
While the acquisitions are leases, they represent a net 290 doors of permanent additional capacity, since Estes also owns the properties.
If the notion of buying leases of properties you own sounds frustrating, Webb Estes can assure you, it is.
“Imagine buying something and then, 15 years later, buying it again,” he said. “But ultimately, these are ones that we’ve owned for a long time, but Yellow still controlled the leases, and so this was a way for us to basically bring it back into the Estes network.”
The six terminals Estes is moving into are all within a few miles of existing Estes terminals, the president and COO said.
The carrier will add nearly 100 doors when it moves into the facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, Webb Estes said.
“A lot of freight moves through Charlotte every night — next-day freight, two-day freight, long haul freight,” he said. “So what's it’s going to allow us to do is move that freight faster with less touches.”
The Minneapolis facility’s greatest advantage is the increase in the property’s acreage. Estes’ existing site lost a piece of the property to a rail project, limiting the parking lot — as well as space for snow removal, he said.
“But on top of that, it also means more trailers and more ability to scale with customers,” Estes said.
