Debt Collection Process

How do apparently succesful buisnesses get into chapter 11 bankruptcy?

I just Found out the Flying J truck stops corporation is in chapter 11 bankruptcy. My question is this. Freakin HOW ? Every flying J truck stop I have ever been to has been busy . Really busy. And their prices are High compared to a neighborhood convenience store. And they get their money too because truckers HAVE to go to truckstops. I will get an energy Drink, a crappy burger and some potato wedges and be out 12-13 bucks easy. Not to mention the 500bucks in fuel my company just bought from them. When some businesses like the restaurant down the street go under it makes sense because, hardly anyone eats there. But several times I have seen successful businesses like the PUMPHANDLE convenience stores go under How do these businesses that have tons of customers and make tons of money manage to blow it ? Are they paying some Fat*ssed vice president of the company too much money to play golf on his 3 hour work day? Or are lawyers getting it from law suits ?

Public Comments

1. they don't watch their finances close enough... they spend more than they have coming in and they take on too much debt. they have the same issues that the average person who isn't good with money has.
2. The underpinnings of the bankruptcy go back to 2005. At the time, Flying J was a successful company with lots of cash sitting idly in a bank. Flying J decided to buy the Bakersfield refinery from Shell Oil Co. The refinery had the potential to be a huge money-maker. It could process up to 70,000 barrels of crude oil a day and produced about 2 percent of California's gasoline supply and 6 percent of its diesel. But the refinery, built in the 1930s, needed major improvements in order to fit with Flying J's plans. "It was a piece of junk," said Jack Humphreville, an analyst who writes for the Web site Trucker.com. "It was just an old refinery that Shell wanted to get rid of because it was inefficient. Shell wasn't making any money. It was an old teapot." Another bet In 2006, Flying J made another gamble. It bought Longhorn Pipeline Holdings, a Houston refined petroleum products distributor that owned a 700-mile mile pipeline running between the Gulf Coast and El Paso, Texas, where it owned a terminal able to store a million barrels. Flying J wanted the pipeline because it could help sell gasoline and diesel in markets across the rapidly growing Southwest. But like Bakersfield, the pipeline needed improvements to meet Flying J's profit expectations. "So there was cash going out to support those two businesses. There was a lot of cash coming in from retail and refining. But at the end of the day, there wasn't enough cash coming in from those other two places so that when oil prices fell in the fall it basically sort of zapped our liquidity," Excerpted from "Flying J's bankruptcy a tale of rapid growth without corresponding profit" by Paul Beebe - The Salt Lake Tribune