YRC to exit former Roadway HQ in Akron, Ohio at end of March

Less-than-truckload (LTL) transportation services provider YRC Worldwide plans to sell the former Akron, Ohio-based headquarters of Roadway, according to a report in the Akron Beacon Journal.

The report said that roughly 100 employees that worked out of this facility could lose their jobs in the coming months, with about another 100 transferring to office space at company truck terminals in Copley and Richfield, Ohio and another 50 receiving offers to relocate to positions based in Kansas, South Dakota, and Iowa.

Once the sale of the building, which will remain open until March 31, is complete, the report said YRCW will have roughly 4,000 employees based in Ohio. The building was first put up for sale in October 2009.

In an interview with LM, Jeff Rogers, president of YRC, the company’s largest subsidiary, said at one point there were plans to not close the facility but to do a buy and lease-back, which fell through.

“One of the big things we are focused on is moving forward as YRC,” said Rogers. “Having the Roadway corporate office still open did not make sense, as we have a corporate office in Kansas and a lot of these back office functions [in Akron] are redundant so it made sense to go ahead and consolidate YRC with one corporate office space,” he said.

Among the YRC back office positions out of Akron are cargo claims, customer service, and accounts payable, among others.

For the third quarter of 2011, it reported a net loss of $177.9 million, which was more than double the $61.7 million net loss from a third quarter of 2010. And it completed its financial restructuring in July. Before the restructuring, YRCW had 48 million outstanding shares. After the restructuring, it has 1.9 billion shares, meaning former shareholders will own just 2.5 percent of YRC. The other 97.5 percent is now owned by new shareholders comprised of lenders, bondholders, and labor union members.

When the restructuring was first announced in July, YRCW officials said it would enhance the company’s liquidity and provide a “runway for the continued growth in revenues and earnings.” YRCW has lost nearly $3 billion over the last four years. During the second half of 2011, new YRC CEO James Welch, Rogers, and CFO Janie Pierson began in their new roles.

With LTL carriers regaining pricing power in recent months, with volumes seeing some growth, Rogers said YRC’s fourth quarter volumes held up very firm up until Christmas to the point where it was stronger than normal seasonality.

“This was also the case at YRC sister companies such as Holland,” Rogers noted. “I felt pretty confident about where December volumes ended up and we feel pretty good heading into 2012.”

A good amount of this momentum, he said, comes from a renewed focus on making YRC a solid service provider, focusing on being a good trucking company and going back to being a leading industry type margin competitiveness as in the past.