Ottawa offers up to $90 million in tariff-related financing to C.A.T.

So we all get big cheques from the Liberals or just Liberals from the Laurentians. Tariff assistance= bailout of a Quebec company as they are big supporters.. They may as well just come out and say hey my buddies company fucked up and is broke so you Canadians are paying to save it.. Truly unbelievable and yet some still think they are the cats ass,,, C.A.T included..
 
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Rob said:
So we all get big cheques from the Liberals or just Liberals from the Laurentians. Tariff assistance= bailout of a Quebec company as they are big supporters.. They may as well just come out and say hey my buddies company fucked up and is broke so you Canadians are paying to save it.. Truly unbelievable and yet some still think they are the cats ass,,, C.A.T included..
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Wish I could collect some of my tax dollars back, too bad they are on credit hold.
 
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I agree with Rob,

Companies that don't survive downturns in their industries should fold. It makes room for more business for everyone else and for new entrants to the industry. As long as we all play by the same rules. Spending taxpayers dollars to help some companies and not others is hugely suspect in my books.

My current and past employers in various industries have had good times, bad times and so-so times. Expecting large cheques from the taxpayers was never part of the business plan for a reason, it shouldn't happen.

Keep well,
Mike
 
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This is a bailout with a tariff-relief label slapped on it. Lots of companies are hurting right now from tariffs and lower volumes, and most of them are just dealing with it. There's a difference between a company that got squeezed by the market and one that was already in trouble and dug its own hole. From what we have all seen on the forum, there are outfits that have had payment issues for months, so this isn't really tariff relief; the government is just bailing out a company that did it to themselves. Not fair to everyone else grinding through the same conditions without a cheque from Ottawa.

This kills competition. The ones with better operations shouldn't have to compete against an outfit that's been fluffed up by the government. If you can't survive, you should go the way of the dodo, not get bailed out so you can keep slanging cheap freight and dragging rates down for everybody else.
 
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Shakey said:
Interesting what you have to prove about your company to get these. One is that you must show you have tried, but no one else will lend you the money.
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Pretty much, tells you something's going on. To be fair a lot of banks are restructuring their lending in the transportation sector right now, so proving nobody will lend to you isn't exactly a tall order these days. But that's the point, it's not a hard box to tick, it just proves you're dug in so deep nobody wants to touch you. Govt is basically handing them a rope to hang themselves with, courtesy of the taxpayer. If no bank or traditional lender thinks these applicants can repay or carry the debt, what kind of guarantee is there on such large loans?
 
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Personally I don't have a problem with the gov't bailing out a Canadian company... if it can be justified.

But this just feels like a company with terrible management, making bad choices and getting handed a life line. Which they will then use to hang themselves as the same bad management is still there and the tax payers will be out 90 million.

The loans should come with a caveat that senior management needs to change.
 
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I feel like the financial trouble happened by taking on the debt from the M&As. When I was in the business, I didn't have many of my customers fail, but in 2008-09 I did and 2 of the 3 were just that - they didn't get government bailouts but restructured and came out of it and actually became stronger. The third - well they f'd me over pretty good.

Other than that there was the odd one that owed for one load, and when I was on the asset side I was pretty tight with credit so the odd time we'd get screwed over for 1 load, so technically not that bad.

In the case of C.A.T. I hope they come out the right side. But if I had trucks and was choosing brokers to take loads from, I just don't know.

What they probably will end up doing is either selling off parts of the company as different operations - my guess is that Left Lane can probably find a good buyer for the logistics operations.
 
theman said:
I feel like the financial trouble happened by taking on the debt from the M&As. When I was in the business, I didn't have many of my customers fail, but in 2008-09 I did and 2 of the 3 were just that - they didn't get government bailouts but restructured and came out of it and actually became stronger. The third - well they f'd me over pretty good.

Other than that there was the odd one that owed for one load, and when I was on the asset side I was pretty tight with credit so the odd time we'd get screwed over for 1 load, so technically not that bad.

In the case of C.A.T. I hope they come out the right side. But if I had trucks and was choosing brokers to take loads from, I just don't know.

What they probably will end up doing is either selling off parts of the company as different operations - my guess is that Left Lane can probably find a good buyer for the logistics operations.
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One nail was going after customer direct freight but doing it by undercutting. And look, undercut 1 lane to get in the door, I get it. Lost leader, get your foot in the door, service the hell out of it, play the long game.

But they didn't do that, at least not the customer I know of. They undercut an entire RFP, got awarded a metric ton of business because of it. Promised dedicated asset service but didn't have the drivers for it. Brokerage was hemorrhaging money... all of this coincides with the posts on this very forum about no one getting paid.

I agree though, you'll likely see them start to divest things. Brokerage arms are usually the easiest to offload, not sure how much value is there though.
 
I think the play wwas simple - they said we have around 2-3k direct jobs in Canada - around 2k jobs in Seriba & Bosnia - and another 2-3k indirect jobs in Canada. If you want us to stay in Canada and not start siphoning assets to our stateside friends/fleets you have to cut us a cheque.


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