After months of coercive threats, Hostess Brands is filing for bankruptcy for the second time in less than a decade. Hostess has assets galore- 40 odd bakeries with replacement values of $10,000,000 and up, around 400 depots and thrift stores on valuable retail turf that are easily worth at least a million apiece, 10,000 smaller trucks, 1000 big trucks, and 2000 semitrailers worth a few hundred million. Even the odds and ends of the asset inventory are huge- like around a hundred thousand shipping "racks" worth several hundred dollars each and god only knows how many baking pans and such.
Biggest losers in this corporate shakedown are the workers- Hostess owes damn near a billion to the bakers pension fund alone, and there's a bunch of other pension funds Hostess has stiffed as well. These are hard working folks- less than a hundred Bakers can bake enough bread to feed several million mouths, and it takes only another hundred or so Teamsters to deliver it.
Some background...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/1 ... upt-(Again),-Stiffs-Workers-For-a-Billion
Hey, I have no doubts the workers are getting the shaft, but there certainly is a shit load of hyperbole and bullshit in the initial paragraph about the supposed value of the store sites and vehicles and equipment. The truth is usually plenty good enough, thanks. Pure bullshit like the figures outlined above should be left to the assholes who want to try and explain how taking away pension funds and laying off workers is GOOD for the workers.
I got a good laugh about it Bushwa. I was at a liquidation auction for a large bakery operation, it was Volmers Bakery in Denver about 25 years ago, it was a bakery that had about a 600 employees.
40 odd bakeries with replacement values of $10,000,000; right, old worn to the woof specialized machinery, so large that almost no other baking company in America can use it, real value at best 1 cent per pound, most of it is going to a scrap yard. The land and buildings would be worth more without the buildings.
Around 400 depots and thrift stores on valuable retail turf; wrong completely wrong, they're located at the cheapest and most run down locations imaginable, in old has been warehouse and retail buildings, and a lot of them are rented not owned.
10,000 smaller trucks, 1000 big trucks, and 2000 semitrailers; wrong an old worn out used fleet. Trucks and step vans that need to be repainted to be use, because Hostess painted advertisements and logos all over them. A huge fleet of old trucks going on the market all at once goes cheep.
And these last two items brought on a belly laugh!
Like around a hundred thousand shipping "racks" worth several hundred dollars each; those racks and the plastic trays that fit them are located here and there in the backrooms of supermarkets just about everywhere. Write them off because they're gone.
And god only knows how many baking pans and such; Baking trays they are not pans, made to be filled, proofed, baked, and handled by an automated mill baking line.
Most of them won't even fit into the average bakery ovens. A specialized custom machine larger than most gymnasiums was what they were made for. The specialized machine and the pans that go with it are scrap metal, after the expense of dismantling it all, and hauling it away.
I saw a baking line like these, and all that went with it at Volmers Bakery in Denver sold for one dollar. The scrap dealer stopped the auctioneer and said, "one dollar." no one else made a bid, so it was sold for one dollar.
There were several huge ovens at that auction where the scrap dealers stopped the auctioneer and turned it around, it wasn't how much it would bring, it was how much the scrap dealer would be paid to dismantle them and haul the scrap, fire bricks, and debris away.
The Hostess bakery operation was old rundown and worn out. For years they've had little or no money to spend to upgrade and modernize.
