Nonunion Defined Benefit Pension, Supplemental Benefit, and Postretirement Health Benefit Plans

(1)	Termination of the nonunion defined benefit pension plan was completed in 2019 and the plan was liquidated as of December 31, 2019.

(2)	Expense for the postretirement health benefit plan is lower for the three months ended March 31, 2020, compared to the same period of 2019, due to the impact of a lower cost prescription drug plan effective January 1, 2020.

(3)

For the three months ended March 31, 2020, pension settlement expense for the supplemental benefit plan of $0.1 million (pre-tax), or $0.1 million (after-tax), was due to a $0.7 million benefit related to an officer retirement. For the three months ended March 31, 2019, pension settlement expense for the nonunion defined benefit pension plan of $1.4 million (pre-tax), or $1.0 million (after-tax), was related to $14.9 million of lump-sum distributions from the plan.

(4)	The Company amortizes actuarial gains and losses over the average remaining active service period of the plan participants and does not use a corridor approach.

Multiemployer Plans

ABF Freight System, Inc. and certain other subsidiaries reported in the Company’s Asset-Based operating segment (“ABF Freight”) contribute to multiemployer pension and health and welfare plans, which have been established pursuant to the Taft-Hartley Act, to provide benefits for its contractual employees. ABF Freight’s contributions generally are based on the time worked by its contractual employees, in accordance with the 2018 ABF NMFA and other related supplemental agreements. ABF Freight recognizes as expense the contractually required contributions for each period and recognizes as a liability any contributions due and unpaid.

The 25 multiemployer pension plans to which ABF Freight contributes vary greatly in size and in funded status. Contribution obligations to these plans are generally specified in the 2018 ABF NMFA, which will remain in effect through June 30, 2023. The funding obligations to the pension plans are intended to satisfy the requirements imposed by the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which was permanently extended by the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act (the “Reform Act”) included in the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2015. Provisions of the Reform Act include, among others, providing qualifying plans the ability to self-correct funding issues, subject to various requirements and restrictions, including applying to the U.S. Department of the Treasury for the reduction of certain accrued benefits. Through the term of its current collective bargaining agreement, ABF Freight’s contribution obligations generally will be satisfied by making the specified contributions when due. However, the Company cannot determine with any certainty the contributions that will be required under future collective bargaining agreements for ABF Freight’s contractual employees.

If ABF Freight was to completely withdraw from certain multiemployer pension plans, under current law, ABF Freight would have material liabilities for its share of the unfunded vested liabilities of each such plan.

Approximately one half of ABF Freight’s total contributions to multiemployer pension plans are made to the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Plan (the “Central States Pension Plan”). As set forth in the 2018 Annual Funding Notice for the Central States Pension Plan, the funded percentage of the plan was 27.2% as of January 1, 2018. ABF Freight received a Notice of Critical and Declining Status for the Central States Pension Plan dated March 29, 2019, in which the plan’s actuary certified that, as of January 1, 2019, the plan is in critical and declining status, as defined by the Reform Act. Critical and declining status is applicable to critical status plans that are projected to become insolvent anytime within the next 14 plan years, or if the plan is projected to become insolvent within the next 19 plan years and either the plan’s ratio of inactive participants to active participants exceeds two to one or the plan’s funded percentage is less than 80%.

As more fully described in Note I to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of the Company’s 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K, ABF Freight’s multiemployer pension plan obligation with the New England Teamsters and Trucking Industry Pension Fund (the “New England Pension Fund”) was restructured under a transition agreement effective on August 1, 2018, which resulted in a related withdrawal liability for which ABF Freight recognized a one-time charge of $37.9 million (pre-tax) as of June 30, 2018. In accordance with the transition agreement, ABF Freight made an initial lump sum cash payment of $15.1 million in third quarter 2018 and the remainder of the withdrawal liability, which had an initial aggregate present value of $22.8 million, will be settled with monthly payments to the New England Pension Fund over a period of 23 years. In accordance with current tax law, these payments are deductible for income taxes when paid.

As of March 31, 2020, the outstanding withdrawal liability to the New England Pension Fund totaled $21.9 million, of which $0.6 million and $21.3 million was recorded in accrued expenses and other long-term liabilities, respectively. The fair value of the obligation was $27.0 million at March 31, 2020, which is equal to the present value of the future withdrawal liability payments, discounted at a 2.3% interest rate determined using the 20-year U.S. Treasury rate plus a spread (Level 2 of the fair value hierarchy).

The multiemployer plan administrators have provided to the Company no other significant changes in information related to multiemployer plans from the information disclosed in the Company’s 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K.