TP Freight Lines, a less-than-truckload carrier staffed by Teamsters members, has suspended operations.

According to a press release from the union, the company "abruptly notified" employees on Aug. 4 "not to report to work until further notice." Calls to the company's main phone switchboard are currently going unanswered.

Teamsters Joint Council 37 said the company failed to make payroll on Aug. 5 and had fallen behind on its health care premiums, leaving workers "without health insurance for more than a month." The company was also delinquent on retirement account contributions, according to the union.

Founded in 1922, Portland, Oregon-based TP Freight specialized in LTL and expedited freight shipments across the Pacific Northwest, with national coverage provided through interline partnerships. Its Facebook page touts service along the "Oregon Coast, Southern Washington and the entire I-5 corridor to the Southern Oregon boundaries."

The company's website lists seven terminals. However, a June 2025 Facebook post shows it sold a facility in Tillamook, Oregon, to a local food producer, and that LTL operations at that facility were sold to Z-10/Team Shippers. The Teamsters press release said TP Freight was sold to Mohamed Hegab around the same time.

"It is not clear if Hegab has any experience running a trucking company, and he is claimed to be faculty at the California State University – Northridge," the press release stated.

The union said TP Freight's largest customer was the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, the state agency that regulates alcohol and cannabis in Oregon. The carrier's drivers and dockworkers were represented by the Teamsters.

"The workers and union put forth good faith efforts to make T.P. Freight successful," the statement read. "The more than 100-year labor-management relationship is evidence of that. Unfortunately, the workers and union efforts were not enough to overcome the financial and operational mismanagement at T.P. Freight."

Teamsters Joint Council 37 did not respond to a request for additional information. It remains unclear whether TP Freight will seek bankruptcy protection, and whether employees will recover the wages and benefit contributions the union says are owed.

TP Freight is one of several regional LTL carriers to close in recent months. California-based Mountain Valley Express confirmed to FreightWaves that it closed its 13-terminal network last month, while Illinois-based Standard Forwarding Freight shuttered operations at its 14 terminals at the end of 2025. The exits extend a yearslong shakeout in the segment, which spent the period after the pandemic-era freight boom working through an extended downturn. The industry's largest failure of that stretch came in 2023, when Yellow Corp., then the country's third-largest LTL carrier, ceased operations and filed for bankruptcy; its terminals were subsequently sold to competitors in court-supervised auctions.

National carriers, by contrast, saw improved financial results during the second quarter. Of the four public carriers reporting results on a calendar-quarter basis, operating margins improved by 90 to 340 basis points year over year, excluding real estate gains. The group is actively using technology to improve operations and remove costs, and lower cost structures, along with contractual rate increases, are driving margin improvement. Most public carriers are guiding to further year-over-year improvement in the third quarter.

Scale has long been an advantage in LTL, where carriers consolidate freight from multiple customers on single trailers and profitability depends heavily on keeping those trailers and the terminal networks they flow through full. For shippers that relied on TP Freight and the other closed regionals — including the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission — the immediate practical effect is rerouting freight onto surviving carriers, many of them the national operators now posting stronger results.

Why it matters: As the industry enters a growth phase following an extended downturn, large national LTL carriers are delivering solid performance. Conversely, regional operators that lack the resources to invest in necessary technology and infrastructure are increasingly forced to exit the market.

Source: FreightWaves