Jack Cooper Closing

Jack Cooper transport who hauled cars for Ford and GM, lost both contracts in the last 2 months and announced they are closing after nearly 100 years.

Sounds like 2,500 drivers are now looking for work.

Jack Cooper Transport closing after nearly 100 years

When this first dropped it caught my cuoristy. The CEO Sara Amico has been in the news in the past, not entirely in a good way.

It sounded odd at first and she blamed Ford/GM for all the trouble. Well not so fast.

A deeper dive has shown things have been going on for weeks/months. Sara has been trying to get Gm to make a 200 million investment into Jack Cooper funding operations. GM asked about Ford and GM doing something and she talked Gm into approaching Ford saying she could not do it per their contract. GM did her bidding and as we all see Ford was not impressed and cancelled their contract.

Then Sara went to GM and was trying to raise rates claiming they had no choice. That was what spooked GM. She said if they didn’t go along with her they would have to shutdown. That was what caused GM to unload 50 new corvett’s and terminate their contract.

Jack Cooper official statements are they are still in neogations with GM. GM sure says the opposite.

In 2019 Jack Cooper declared bankruptcy too restructure its debit. That was 6 years after their final buying spree of 4-5 companies. Last one was purchased in 2013. Now 6 years later they apparently have money problems again and tried getting their 2 largest customers to invest 200 million in them.

Makes a reasonable person ask what is and has been going on within that company.

Teamsters have been making threats off and on even making a statement whatever carriers get the contracts they will make them join the teamsters those loads belong to the union.

I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think the union can force anyone to join them.

We all saw the fall of yellow and i haven’t heard any success stories of what the union did for those members that lost their jobs. I don’t expect anything different on this one.

This makes the 2nd large trucking company that are union going out of business in recent times, makes me wonder what effect if any the union played in the demise directly or indirectly?

The crazy thing to me was Jack Cooper tried to buy Yellow Freight for 1.2 Billion then in December 23 now a little over a year later they needed their customers to invest in them. GM rejected a $200 million investment from a 3rd party that Cooper had secured. Now they are out of business.

I remember Jack Cooper coming in basically in the 11th hour trying to make a deal. The courts were already involved and made the final ruling against the purchase.

I don’t remember alot of the proposal but a key componet was the gov’t re-structuring and putting off the repayment of the bailout yellow had been given. The gov’t treasury was not in favor of that process.

We all know a very large portion of yellow’s demise was bad management. I don’t know if that is the case at Jack Cooper, but that can’t be ruled out I don’t think.

I remember back during the auto industry bailouts the term widely used was “too big to fail”. That one turned out ok in the long run, but I for one don’t see what obligation the tax payers have to bailout any company.

We as individuals are responsible for our actions and I believe that goes for large companies as well. As a very small carrier I’m solely responsible for my own decisions. If those are bad decisions I pay the price for it and sure would never approach a customer telling them they need to bail me out.

I hate to be the one to say it but 2,500 drivers looking for a job in this market right now is going to be quite an uphill battle. Makes me grateful for my job that is keeping me more than busy.