OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (Mar. 2, 2005) — Yellow Roadway Corp. Chairman Bill Zollars expressed optimism about the announced Yellow Roadway purchase of USF Corp.

The Kansas City Star reported yesterday that Zollars said Yellow Roadway’s interest in USF stems from the Chicago company’s regional, next-day operations. USF has four regional trucking firms, the biggest of which is USF Holland, a unionized carrier. Yellow Roadway operates New Penn Motor Express, a Northeast regional trucking firm. New Penn serves much of the dense Northeastern region that USF covered through the Red Star unit it shut down last year in a union dispute.

By merging with USF, Zollars told investors that Yellow Roadway will become a major player in the regional next-day market. It’s a niche of the trucking industry that is more profitable and growing faster than the traditional long-haul service offered by Yellow Roadway’s main subsidiaries, Yellow Transportation and Roadway Express.

“We will now be in a position to offer next-day service in a comprehensive way across the country,” Zollars was quoted as saying. “This gives us an opportunity to quickly accelerate into that marketplace. There’s a big piece of this that’s about growth and access to faster-growing segments.”

As in 2003 Roadway merger, Zollars said, the initial savings will come from purchasing leverage, eliminating duplicative administrative services, combining technology and consolidating back-office functions. But long-term cost-cutting may be a little more complicated than it was with Roadway.

“The one challenging thing that is true of the USF situation that was not true of the Roadway situation is that the synergies are more dispersed,” he said. “At Roadway, they were all in one big pile, if you will. Here they’re spread out a little bit. That’s going to make things a little bit slower, but I think we’ll be able to get at them pretty quickly.”

As in the previous merger, USF will keep its brand separate from Yellow Roadway’s operating units.

Coincidentally, the Teamster’s Union announced a $5-million settlement with USF Corp. to close the books on USF’s shutdown of its Red Star unit last year. Some grievances involved workers who were denied vacation pay, while others involved unpaid personal time off, the union said.