File 11 for hope: In today’s economy, bankruptcy protection can be a tool to become stronger – Jim Palmer Trucking of Missoula, Montana

Lonnie Wallace looks out his office window at Jim Palmer Trucking http://www.jimpalmertrucking.com/ near the Wye in Missoula, Montana http://www.missoulachamber.com/ and sees smoke rising from the towering stacks at Smurfit-Stone Container Co. http://www.smurfit.com:8080/content/

He knows the worry that consumes the employees and his business associates who work at the struggling linerboard plant in Frenchtown.

When Smurfit-Stone filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection two weeks ago, the president of the Missoula-based national trucking business cringed.

“My first reaction was, ‘Oh, no. We are in the same situation,’ ” recalls Wallace, whose own company filed Chapter 11 in July. “Timing for us is pretty critical for all of our projected budgets in our bankruptcy plan, and Smurfit, one of our clients, is a part of that.”

What came next, he says, was a flood of empathy.

By BETSY COHEN of the Missoulian