Treasury approves $700 million loan to company being sued for overcharging Pentagon

The Treasury Department on Wednesday approved a $700 million loan to YRC Worldwide, a financially-troubled trucking company that is also being sued by the Defense Department (DOD) for overpricing shipping costs.

“We are pleased for Treasury to make this loan pursuant to the CARES Act,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “This loan will enable a critical vendor to the Department of Defense to maintain significant employment while providing appropriate compensation to taxpayers.” 

The CARES Act, just one of several pieces of coronavirus stimulus legislation, was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in late March. 

The government loan comes as the company has experienced competitive problems over the past five years, and YRC’s stock dropped nearly 30 percent this year. It was only worth $70 million at the end of Tuesday, CNN reported.

In a statement, Treasury described YRC as a “leading provider of critical military transportation and other hauling services to the U.S. government and provides 68% of less-than-truckload services to the Department of Defense.”

Under the loan agreement, the government will now own about 30 percent of YRC’s stock, with the loans maturing September 2024.

The DOD sued the company in December 2018, alleging it overcharged the government for the movement of its shipments, according to the network.

The filed DOD complaint states that YRC “reweighed thousands of shipments and suppressed the results whenever they indicated that a shipment was actually lighter than its original estimated weight.” The complaint alleges that this happened for seven years, costing the agency millions of dollars.

YRC told CNN that it is “a contractual dispute which originated in 2009 and predates the current board and CEO by more than a decade.”