178-Truck Wisconsin Carrier Seeks Chapter 11 As $136M Crash Claim Looms—Freight Jobs At Risk
Thomas Sparhawk built his trucking company the way your grandfather would recognize, one truck, one route, two Wisconsin towns, and a work ethic that never clocked out. No venture capital. No corporate backing. Just a man who bet on himself, kept winning, and eventually handed the keys to his son. Mark inherited 178 trucks, over a thousand trailers, and a payroll full of people who’d never worked anywhere else.
Then, on one March morning in 2026, Mark walked into federal bankruptcy court and signed the papers. Not because freight dried up. Not because of a bad quarter. What happened to Sparhawk Trucking reads like something out of a country song — betrayal, a train wreck, a hospital bed, and a $136 million bill sitting where the future used to be.
The Year Mark Sparhawk Nearly Died
From January through October 2023, Mark Sparhawk had 11 surgeries. While he was flat on his back, fighting for his life, his business kept running, just not the way he intended. He came back on October 15th against his doctor’s orders, because that’s what you do when your father’s name is on the door.
What he walked back into wasn’t a company that had held together. According to his own sworn statement filed with the bankruptcy court, the people he left in charge had been busy. Not busy keeping the lights on. Busy helping themselves.
His Own People Robbed Him Blind
Mark Sparhawk said it himself, in writing, under oath: “During my absence and unbeknownst to me, it appears that management sold equipment for cash and kept the money” . His equipment. His company. His father’s legacy was quietly liquidated while he was in a hospital bed. That’s the betrayal, but there’s a second wound, and this one he inflicted on himself … with help.
Without ever contacting an attorney, Mark signed his business over to a receivership, and a receiver was appointed in December. From November 3 through February 9, Sparhawk Trucking paid over $1.4 million in related expenses. A deal he signed, without counsel, that cost the company money it didn’t have. He came back to save the business. What he found was that it had been hit from two directions at once — one by people who betrayed him, and one by a decision made without anyone in his corner.
A Louisiana Train Crossing Changed Everything
Before any of the internal damage was visible, a different clock had been running since August 2021. A Sparhawk truck got stuck on a railroad crossing in Cade, Louisiana, and a train hauling hazardous materials plowed into it. The lawsuit that followed put $136 million on the table. Sparhawk’s insurer paid the full $10 million policy limit, every dollar the coverage allowed.
The railroad wanted $126 million more. Mark Sparhawk personally called the railroad’s president in September 2025 to try to bridge that gap. Railroad lawyers don’t settle cheap, and this one didn’t. That claim didn’t shrink. It just sat on the books, compounding pressure on a company already bleeding from the inside.
Then the Trucks Started Breaking Down
A man can survive a lawsuit. He can rebuild after betrayal. But when the equipment turns on you, the math stops working entirely. Sparhawk’s 2023 Peterbilt trucks experienced widespread injector failures, sending rigs breaking down across the country. It ran all through 2024, no end in sight, no clean fix.
“Throughout 2024, I was dealing with mechanical issues on a daily basis. In addition to repair costs, downtime, and increased travel costs for drivers, customer deliveries were delayed,” Mark Sparhawk wrote in his statement. Then came the line that tells you everything: “Trucking lost customers” . Three words. No spin. Just the sound of a phone that stopped ringing.
He Started Writing Personal Checks
When the cash ran short, Mark Sparhawk didn’t call a consultant. He opened his own wallet. Two hundred thousand dollars a month. Sometimes two hundred and fifty thousand, his personal money, month after month, keeping drivers paid and loads moving. Meanwhile, WoodTrust Bank sat on $10.1 million in debt.
On the same ledger, in a line that stops you cold: Thomas Sparhawk — the founder, the man who incorporated this company in 1980 during an economic depression — was still owed $1.7 million by his own son’s company and hadn’t received a payment in some time. The son was draining his savings to save what the father had built. That’s not a business story. That’s a family story.
The Drivers Nobody’s Talking About
Last October, federal records showed 178 power units and 146 drivers. By the week of the filing, those numbers had fallen hard, down to just over 50 W-2 employees and 48 owner-operators. Owner-operators are what this industry runs on: men who own their rig, pay their own fuel, carry their own risk, and trust the carrier to pay them for every mile.
In a bankruptcy proceeding, they’re classified as unsecured creditors. Behind the bank. Behind the lawyers. Behind everyone holding a lien. Their trucks may be rolling down the interstate right now. Whether those miles ever get paid is now a question sitting on a federal docket in Wisconsin — and most of them won’t know the answer until it’s too late to do anything about it.
Bankruptcy Isn’t a Funeral, But Read the Numbers
Chapter 11 is a legal shield, not a white flag. Creditors can’t collect, the company gets breathing room, and a judge oversees whatever comes next, restructuring or sale. The first-day motions determine whether drivers keep getting paid and whether vendors keep getting called.
Here’s where the math gets brutal: Sparhawk declared assets of $50,000 or less. Liabilities between $10 million and $50 million. And BNSF’s $136 million claim is still circling overhead, waiting to land. A company with $35.1 million in 2025 revenue walking into court with $50,000 in assets isn’t reorganizing from a position of strength. It’s asking a judge for a miracle.
The Industry That Was Already Hungry
Sparhawk didn’t fall in a forgiving market. The trucking industry has been through what the freight community openly calls the Great Freight Recession, a multi-year rate collapse that has chewed through carriers big and small. Rates that hit $3.00 per mile during the pandemic freight boom cratered to around $1.95–$2.05 by early 2025. Insurance costs surged 40–50% over five years, driven in part by the exact kind of catastrophic crash liability that a $136 million railroad claim represents.
More than 88,000 trucking companies ceased operations in 2023 alone. At least 21 more filed for bankruptcy in a single quarter of 2025. The market was already a meat grinder before Mark Sparhawk ever walked back into his office on October 15, 2023. He just didn’t know yet how deep the blade had already gone.
What Nearly Five Decades Buys You in Bankruptcy Court
A driver named Terry Schram once wrote that at truck stops, drivers trash-talk their carriers constantly, “and I tell them there is nothing that compares to working for Sparhawk”. That loyalty doesn’t appear on a creditor priority list. WoodTrust Bank, owed $10.1 million and holding secured claims, goes first. The mechanics, the dispatchers, the owner-operators who kept those Peterbilts rolling, unsecured, behind every lien in the stack. Thomas Sparhawk, who built this from a body shop in 1979, still owed $1.7 million, somewhere in that same pile.
In the weeks ahead, a federal judge will decide how to carve up what’s left. The bank will be fine. The railroad will be fine. The question is whether the people who actually kept those trucks moving, the drivers, the shop guys, the old man who started it all, get anything more than a story about how they got burned.
Sources:
Sparhawk Trucking files for bankruptcy — Trucking Dive
Wisconsin-based carrier files for chapter 11 protection — FreightWaves/Yahoo Finance
BNSF Railway Company sues Dean Arlyn Goehring Jr. and Sparhawk Trucking — Legal Newsline
Carrier Bankruptcies 2025: Freight Capacity Crisis Explained — Luna Logistics
Multiple distressed trucking companies file Chapter 11 — AOL Finance
About — Sparhawk Trucking — sparhawktrucking.com
