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Trucking company XPO Inc. won a bid to buy 28 service centers of bankrupt Yellow Corp for $870 million in a closely watched auction of the nearly 100-year-old firm's assets, Reuters reported. Yellow, formerly known as YRC, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August after blaming the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union for its demise. The company was one of the nation's largest so-called less-than-truckload carriers in the U.S. and owned about 12,000 trucks and 35,000 trailers and its customers included Walmart and Home Depot. XPO expects the deal, which is subject to court approval, to add to core profit in 2024 and adjusted profit per share from continuing operations from 2025, according to a filing on Tuesday. The deal will add "significant footprint in areas where XPO was previously capacity constrained, the path towards the company's 2027 goals," said Jonathan Chappell, analyst at Evercore ISI. The company has also entered into an $870 million credit agreement which it may use to finance a deal it said would help optimize routes for its less-than-truckload transportation in North America.

Bankrupt trucking company Yellow is considering an offer to revive the carrier and rehire thousands of its former workers as it weighs competing bids at a court-supervised auction that would disperse its nationwide network of truck terminals to rivals, the Wall Street Journal reported. Sarah Riggs Amico, executive chair of auto-carrier Jack Cooper Transport, is leading a bid that would replace Yellow, which shut down over the summer, with a smaller, leaner trucking company that aims to win back some of the billions of dollars worth of freight business that has shifted to a range of other carriers. The bid faces major hurdles, including persuading the federal government to extend a $700 million loan made to Yellow during the COVID-19 pandemic that is due in 2024. It also comes as Yellow is deep in the process of selling off tens of thousands of trucks and trailers and about 170 North American truck terminals, assets that have been valued at a total of more than $2 billion. Yellow has already begun sending its equipment to liquidators for sale over the coming year, and it has accepted a stalking-horse bid of $1.525 billion from rival trucker Estes Express Lines for its real estate holdings, which are being auctioned this week.

Members of the United Automobile Workers union have given their backing to new contracts with the three big U.S. automakers, agreements that deliver hefty wage increases and other gains that had eluded the union for more than 20 years, the New York Times reported. In the most closely contested vote, the tentative contract agreement at General Motors won the support of 55 percent of the nearly 36,000 members casting ballots, according to a tally from all the G.M. locals that the union posted on Thursday. Tentative agreements with Ford Motor and Stellantis, the maker of brands including Jeep and Chrysler, appeared headed for approval by more decisive margins, nearly complete results there showed. A spokesman for the union confirmed the accuracy of the tallies but declined to comment further. The agreements are similar across the three automakers and raise the top wage for production workers 25 percent, to more than $40 over four and a half years, from $32.

A United Automobile Workers union vote on a tentative contract agreement with General Motors that provides record wage increases has run into unexpectedly strong resistance from veteran workers, the New York Times reported. Voting at most union locals has been completed and the final result, due as early as Thursday evening, will very likely be decided by a narrow margin. A majority of workers at several large plants in Michigan, Indiana and Tennessee rejected the contract, though union members at a large sport utility plant in Arlington, Texas, voted in favor of it. G.M., Ford Motor and Stellantis agreed to similar contracts with the union after U.A.W. members went on strike at select plants and warehouses. Workers walked off the job at the first three plants on Sept. 15 and stayed on strike for more than 40 days. It was the first time the union has struck all three automakers at the same time, though it did not shut down all of the factories of any company. The agreement appears to be headed for ratification at Ford and Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram vehicles, by comfortable margins, according to running tallies the U.A.W. published online. At G.M., many veteran workers have opposed the contract because they want the company to contribute more money to retirement plans and the cost of health care for retirees.

Jack Cooper Transport, a specialized operator that hauls automobiles for carmakers, plans to submit a bid backed by $1 billion in financing and support from the Teamsters union and some U.S. lawmakers that would halt the liquidation of trucking giant Yellow and seek to resurrect the shuttered business, the Wall Street Journal reported. The improbable effort would require the Treasury Department to defer repayment for several years of a $700 million loan provided to Yellow under a COVID pandemic-era bailout, one of several debts that helped push one of the country’s biggest truckers into collapse earlier this year. The Jack Cooper Transport bid would provide about $1 billion to pay off other secured creditors, offer unsecured creditors shares in the business and hire back some of the 22,000 Teamsters members that lost their jobs when the company shut down over the summer, according to the people familiar with the matter. It would restore operations under a new, leaner company and seek to win back freight business that has dispersed to other carriers. The effort comes as the sale of Yellow’s sprawling network of trucking terminals and tens of thousands of trucks and trailers is moving through U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The bankruptcy process has a deadline Thursday for submission of bids for real-estate assets, with a minimum of $1.525 billion already set for the land and buildings ahead of an auction scheduled for Nov. 28. That would be enough to repay the company’s secured creditors, including the $700 million federal loan, and to cover wages and other payments owed to laid off workers.

Congressional pressure is growing on the U.S. Treasury to help salvage trucking giant Yellow from bankruptcy, from Republicans and Democrats alike, letters viewed by Reuters show. Republican Senator Josh Hawley is the latest lawmaker to ask Treasury, in a letter on Thursday, to extend the terms of a controversial $700 billion pandemic loan granted by the Trump administration to Yellow. It follows separate letters sent by Republican Senator Roger Marshall and Democrats Sherrod Brown and Bob Casey last month. Earlier this week, Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey sent letters. Republicans and Democrats pushing Treasury could benefit Jack Cooper, one the largest U.S. privately owned auto transport companies, making its long-shot bid to rescue Yellow from bankruptcy liquidation more likely. Key to Jack Cooper's bid is convincing Treasury to extend the loan currently due at the end of September 2024 to the same time in 2026, allowing Jack Cooper to offer more favorable terms for Yellow.

U.S. job openings increased in September, pointing to persistent labor market tightness that is underpinning the economy and likely to see interest rates staying high for some time, Reuters reported. Job openings, a measure of labor demand, were up 56,000 to 9.553 million on the last day of September, the Labor Department said in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, on Wednesday. Data for August was revised lower to show 9.497 million job openings instead of the previously reported 9.610 million. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 9.250 million job openings in September.

The collapse of one of the largest U.S. trucking companies is propping up competitors in a lean freight market, the Wall Street Journal reported. XPO, ABF Freight and Saia are among the carriers reporting strong growth in pricing power, shipment volumes and other key measures during the most recent quarter in trucking’s less-than-truckload sector, a high-stakes corner of the market in which carriers combine freight from multiple customers in a single trailer. The results suggest the roughly 50,000 daily shipments once carried by Yellow, the nation’s third largest LTL carrier, have been largely absorbed by other operators and that retailers and manufacturers are paying higher rates to keep their freight moving. LTL truckers are loading up on some of Yellow’s big volumes largely by adding shipments to existing networks, keeping capacity relatively tight so they can charge higher prices than Yellow. “It shows that the LTL industry, among all the transportation segments, is healthier and in a better position for the next three years from a shareholder point of view,” said Satish Jindel, president of transportation industry consultancy SJ Consulting Group. ArcBest said average daily shipments at its LTL carrier ABF Freight jumped 20% in the third quarter from the second quarter while a key measure of pricing grew 16%. That helped ArcBest offset a decline in demand in its broader freight operations, although its overall third-quarter net profit was still down by more than half compared with the same period last year, at $34.9 million.

U.S. employment costs unexpectedly accelerated in the third quarter, heightening concerns that a strong labor market risks keeping inflation above the Federal Reserve’s target, Bloomberg News reported. The employment cost index, a broad gauge of wages and benefits, increased 1.1% in the July-to-September period after rising 1% in the second quarter, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures released Tuesday. While wage growth picked up slightly within private industry, salaries at state and local governments surged. Compared with a year earlier, the ECI was up 4.3%, the smallest annual advance since the end of 2021. Still, that’s well above the typical pace seen in the years before the pandemic. While there are a number of other earnings metrics published more frequently — including average hourly earnings figures from the monthly jobs report — economists tend to prefer the ECI because it’s not distorted by shifts in the composition of employment among occupations or industries. With Fed officials watching economic data closely for any signs that the job market is no longer easing, the surprise pickup in labor costs may fuel concerns that inflation will remain stubborn.

The United Auto Workers union is close to securing a new tentative labor contract with Ford Motor, after intense bargaining overnight and into the day Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported. The UAW, now in the sixth week of its strike at the three Detroit automakers, has called for work stoppages at three Ford factories and sent more than 16,000 U.S. factory workers at the Dearborn, Mich., based car company to picket lines. The two sides have moved closer on key bargaining issues in recent days, the people said. The situation remains fluid, and there is still a possibility talks could stall. Union leaders are expected to take several days to review the details of any tentative deal that is reached before the UAW makes it public, some of the people said. It is unclear how soon workers would return to the factories, following a proposed labor deal. The membership must approve the tentative agreement with a majority vote for it to be officially adopted. The contract, which would span more than four years, covers about 57,000 union-represented workers at Ford.