YRC closing "Cadillac" of trucking facilities in Ohio

Updated with YRC comment
Another YRC asset dumpIt's been described as a gem of a building: Large, clean, well-lit, and 202 truck bays. The "Cadillac" of trucking terminals as one analyst described it.

The owner, YRC Worldwide, announced it is closing the terminal in Richfield, Ohio, as part of its cost-cutting strategies.

Overland Park-based YRC told its Teamsters workers that it is seeking what is called "change in operations" in its contract that will lead to the closing of the terminal. Work will be moved to two other Ohio facilities, according to the Akron Beacon Journal.

"This is part of our ongoing efforts to synchronize our network to continue to optimize customer service," YRC said in a statement Wednesday.

According to the newspaper, the terminal changes will affect about 1,000 workers, including about 400 now on layoff.

Analyst John Schulz of the Gerson Lehman Group wrote in a note that the "change reduces YRC's footprint in northeastern Ohio from three to two terminals. It also ends almost 10 years of what the Teamsters call a one-roof agreement that protected a lot of Teamster jobs at Yellow."

Schulz said how quickly the Richfield complex gets sold, and to whom, will tell a lot about the future of long haul shipping. "If a UPS Freight or a FedEx Freight scoops up this gem, and I would think somebody would for a nice price, then I would be fairly optimistic about the return of some normalcy to the LTL marketplace," Schulz wrote. "If this terminal lingers on the marketplace for long, that is not a good sign to me."