Triways hauled freight out of Jurupa Valley, Calif., for nearly half a century. In 2024 the family firm had some 60 workers and nearly $10 million in sales. That year it was offered a job serving Navy commissaries in four states. The job needed more trailers and drivers up front. The bank had already stopped lending more, so the money came from merchant cash advances. The Journal's Ruth Simon and Neil Mehta tell what happened next.
Here's what a merchant cash advance is, in one sentence. A funder hands a business cash today and takes a slice of its future sales back, pulled from its bank account daily or weekly. The funders call it a purchase of future sales, not a loan. So the rules written for loans don't apply, and the real cost can run to several hundred percent a year, or more. One Triways advance worked out to an estimated 2,190% a year by the APR on its own disclosure form. APR is the annual percentage rate, the yearly cost of the money. John Jauregui, the 70-year-old CEO, told the Journal he had no idea it would cost that much.
He took his first advance in fall 2023, when the bank wouldn't extend more credit. He planned to pay it off fast. Instead the offers kept coming, almost one a day, and he kept saying yes. He took more than 30 in roughly 2½ years. “It's addictive because it's easy to get,” he said. A broker even talked him into a new advance to pay off the old ones, so Triways owed on all of them. The Journal's chart follows two advances, both dated Nov. 4 of an earlier year. A $300,000 advance put $105,020 in the company's account after fees and payoffs to other funders. A $450,000 advance put in $5,815.60. Each had to be repaid at about one and a half times its face, $449,700 and $674,550. Together the estimated daily pulls came to $3,212.15 plus $4,818.22.
It isn't just one trucker
The daily pulls left little cash, and Triways started missing rent in December. In April it filed for Chapter 11, citing cash-advance payments of $250,000 a month. A judge threw the case out in June after the company missed payroll. Triways shut in September. Two funders now want default judgments of more than $585,000. The offers haven't stopped. On a recent Wednesday, six more landed on Jauregui's phone by text, inside about two hours.
This is a growing business. A Federal Reserve survey found 12% of small firms that sought financing last year applied for a cash advance. In 2024 it was 9%. Small-business bankruptcy filings rose 36% in the first nine months of 2026. Cash-advance firms were creditors in more than half of those cases, by the Journal's count. The industry's own trade group puts the market at roughly $20 billion and admits there are “predatory companies” in it.
Our read
This is a Cash Flow · M5 and Consumer Protection · M11 story, and our verdict on the product is avoid. A Naples bankruptcy lawyer gave the Journal the only test that matters. An advance can make sense for a leaky roof you can repay in 30 days. “Don't use an MCA as a line of credit,” he said. Triways used it as one for 2½ years. Read the math before you read the pitch. Ask what reaches your account after fees. Ask what you pay back in total, and what comes out each day. Here, the second advance paid the company $5,815.60 of $450,000, a little over 1% of its face.
If you own a business, the thing this story touches is your cash reserve and your bank line. The time to set up a line of credit is while sales are good, before the big order lands. This week, check two things. Open the business bank account and list every automatic daily or weekly pull. Work out what each one costs you in a year. Then find the fast-cash offers in your texts and delete them. If you're retired and a child or grandchild runs a shop, send them this story. You fix the roof on a dry day. Set up the credit line while the sales are still coming in. If you'd like a second set of eyes on the cash side of a plan, that's what a review is for.