H&W Motor Express of Dubuque, Iowa, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, but there are doubts about the company’s ability to reorganize successfully.

Attorneys representing the company say the intention is to continue operating the company and come out of Chapter 11 as a reorganized company.
According to published reports, the company’s trucks are idle less than a week after it filed for bankruptcy. The Teamsters union says workers are owed three weeks' pay.
Until last year, H&W was a less than truckload company owned by two families that founded it in 1927. In January 2001, Roger D. Waldner bought the company from the families. According to published reports, the terms of the sale called for the families to provide up to $2.2 million in cash if the company needed it within the five years following the sale. Waldner says the families haven’t lived up to that agreement and he had no choice but to put the issue in bankruptcy court.
If the company does survive, it will be in a much scaled-back version. H&W terminals in Milwaukee, St. Paul, Kansas City and St. Louis will likely be on the chopping block, leaving the company as an Iowa-Chicago carrier. He said there are not plans to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which would mean liquidation.