Three Years After the Shutdown, Yellow's Last Pension Fight Ends at $526 Million — If a Delaware Judge Signs Off on September 11

Yellow Corp. stopped rolling on July 30, 2023, and filed for bankruptcy a week later. The trucks were sold within months and the terminals within a year and a half. What could not be sold was the argument over how much a dead carrier owes the union pension funds it walked away from — a fight that has now outlasted the company by three years and consumed $293 million in professional fees. On August 28 the liquidating trustee, Daniel Golden, told the Delaware bankruptcy court that the argument is over. Settlements with the last four multiemployer pension plans, totaling up to $526 million, are on the docket for a hearing on September 11. If Judge Craig Goldblatt approves them, the trust can finally start paying general unsecured creditors, and the last chapter of the largest trucking bankruptcy in U.S. history can be written.

Who gets what

The bulk of the money goes to three funds, according to the filing as reported by FreightWaves and Trucking Dive: the New York State Teamsters Conference Pension and Retirement Fund, which would receive a $300 million allowed claim; the Western Conference of Teamsters Pension Trust Fund, at nearly $126.4 million; and the Western Pennsylvania Teamsters and Employers Pension Fund, at $71.2 million. A fourth plan, the International Association of Machinists' Motor City Pension Fund, gets nearly $5 million. The package also trims two small New Jersey settlements — with Teamsters Local 617 and International Longshoremen's Association Local 1730 — by millions of dollars each. These are allowed claims against the estate, not cash: what a fund actually collects depends on how much is left to distribute.

The hedge fund that owned Yellow

The other party to every one of these fights has been MFN Partners, the Boston hedge fund that became Yellow's largest shareholder before the collapse and, in the words of Trucking Dive, "had more money invested in Yellow than the U.S. government" — a reference to the $700 million pandemic-era Treasury loan. MFN and Yellow argued from the start that the pension plans were fully funded once they received federal bailout money under the American Rescue Plan and that Yellow therefore owed no withdrawal liability at all; failing that, they argued the funds and federal regulators had done the math wrong. They lost in Delaware, lost again at the Third Circuit in September 2025, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case this summer. Along the way MFN bought up some of the very pension claims it was objecting to, as a hedge. As part of the new settlements it agrees to drop its pending appeals and waive certain claims for legal fees and expenses.

“ [The agreements] will bring the current multi-year long MEPP litigation in these cases to an end … thus allowing the Liquidating Trust to begin making meaningful distributions to general unsecured claimants. ”

How much is left

Yellow's estate was liquidated fast and at good prices. Roughly $2.4 billion in real estate sales and $176 million in net fleet proceeds paid off $1.2 billion of secured debt and $213 million of bankruptcy financing. By November 2025, when Yellow reached term sheets with 14 pension plans that cut more than $7.4 billion of asserted withdrawal claims down to about $1.5 billion, FreightWaves reported the estate expected to have only $600 million to $700 million left for everyone else — pensions and former employees included. The June monthly operating report showed $593 million in cash. Recoveries for unsecured creditors under the confirmed liquidation plan were projected in the high teens, in percentage terms.

For the roughly 25,500 people who lost their jobs in the last week of July 2023 — 3,500 nonunion staff on July 28 and 22,000 union employees two days later — the practical news is narrower. Claims for accrued paid time off and sick leave have been classified as priority and will be paid. Federal WARN Act claims over the lack of notice were settled separately last year for about $12 million across two classes of workers. The pension money itself goes to the plans, which keep paying benefits to retirees; it is not a check to individual former drivers. Central States, the largest of the funds and the one that covered most of Yellow's Teamsters, settled its claims in the April round.