Jevic Transportation
files for bankruptcy
Jevic Transportation Inc. sought bankruptcy protection, a day after the closely held trucking company said it would halt operations because of rising fuel costs and tightening credit.
The company, based in Delanco, N.J., listed both debt and assets of $50 million to $100 million in Chapter 11 documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. Jevic said it fired about 90 percent of its 1,500 employees.
President David H. Gorman said in court papers that Jevic plans to borrow as much as $60 million, about $34 million of it on a revolving basis, from lenders including CIT Group/Business Credit Inc. to ''fund the orderly liquidation of assets.''
Jevic said revenue fell 8.4 percent in 2006 and 7.7 percent last year as diesel prices surged. Retail diesel prices stood at $4.50 a gallon this week in the U.S., up 60 percent from last year, according to the Department of Energy.
Jevic, with about 1,000 trucks, was acquired in 2006 by Boca Raton, Florida-based Sun Capital Partners from Saia Inc. YRC Worldwide Inc., the biggest U.S. trucker by sales with Roadway operations in Akron, spun off Jevic and Saia in 2002 as SCS Transportation, which took the Saia name after unloading Jevic.
Fed auctions loans
to pressured banks
Working to relieve stressed credit markets, the Federal Reserve has auctioned another $75 billion in loans to squeezed banks, bringing the total to $510 billion since December.
Billionaire investor
blasts energy policy
Lawmakers have failed to create an effective energy policy, leaving the country ''crippled,'' billionaire investor Boone Pickens told CNBC.
Pickens, the founder and chairman of BP Capital LLC of Dallas, repeated his forecast for oil to hit $150 a barrel this year. He criticized the government for pushing use of the fuel-additive ethanol, which he called ''a joke,'' and politicians for proposing a suspension of the federal gas tax.
Core inflation up
for finished goods
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the core price of finished goods, excluding food and energy prices, jumped by 0.4 percent last month. That left prices 3 percent higher in April than they were a year ago, marking the highest rate of core inflation on the producer level in 16 years.
Prices for crude materials like steel and iron rose 78.7 percent since the start of the year.
Oil prices jump
above $129 a barrel
Wall Street stumbled Tuesday after oil prices spiked to a record above $129 a barrel and a government report raised investors' concerns about the impact of inflation on consumer spending. The Dow Jones industrials fell 199.48, or 1.53 percent, to 12,828.68, logging the biggest daily slide since a 206-point drop on May 7.
Crude jumped after OPEC's president was quoted as saying his organization won't raise its output before its next meeting in September. That sent a barrel of light, sweet crude to a trading high of $129.60 before it finished just above $129.
Analyst Stephen Leeb believes escalating oil prices have replaced the health of the financial sector as the market's biggest worry. He said rising energy creates a ''very vicious circle'' through the economy, and thinks the government must take some kind of action to bring down prices.
''Stock investors are watching oil, period,'' said Leeb, whose New York-based Leeb Capital Management focuses on crude and its impact on equities.
Netflix device offers
rental service on TV
Preparing for the eventual extinction of its DVD-by-mail rental service, Netflix Inc. introduced its first solution for subscribers who want entertainment delivered directly to their televisions with just a few clicks on a remote control.
The breakthrough comes in the form of 5-inch-by-5-inch device tailored for a year-old service that uses the high-speed Internet to stream more than 10,000 movies and TV shows from Netflix's library.
