Penn Central Transportation Company know simply as Penn Central was a company based on American railroads. It operated only for about eight years and started falling apart. The company seemed to have a promising future, since it was based on a merger between Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad and later even New Haven Railroad merged as well.

On June 21st 1970, the largest US corporate bankruptcy occurs when Penn Central declares Section 77 bankruptcy. There were many government regulations during that time that restricted what the railroad companies could do and therefore they were not able to work around that.

The company seemed to struggle and the fact that the trucking industry was rising did not help. Since the company had a hard time working with the market conditions, bankruptcy was the only way out.