Bollinger Motors Inc., the once high-flying Oak Park, Michigan, electric truck maker founded a decade ago, is now struggling to make payroll and a court-appointed receiver is set to take control of its daily operations and remaining assets.

U.S. District Judge Terrence Berg on Wednesday said the company would go into receivership amid its recent financial woes and as debts to suppliers have piled up, though details of the oversight plan were not yet finalized. The order came as part of a lawsuit filed by Robert Bollinger, the company's founder and former CEO, who says the truck maker owes him about $10 million.

Bollinger Motors, whose majority owner is Mullen Automotive Inc., started making an electric chassis cab truck called the B4 last year, and a larger version, the B5, was scheduled for release in 2026. Robert Bollinger and current executives with the company say a primary issue in recent months has been obtaining enough funding for day-to-day operations from Mullen, a California-based EV company.

The company recently has struggled to pay many of its bills, CEO Bryan Chambers testified Wednesday during a hearing in Detroit. It recently missed a scheduled 401(k) contribution for employees, fell behind on rent for its Oak Park offices, and also missed a recent payment to Robert Bollinger on the $10 million loan he made to the company last October. It also has trimmed some of its workforce, which as of this week numbered about 120.

The truck maker faces eight lawsuits from suppliers who are owed money, Chambers said. Mullen had sent a $350,000 payment to Bollinger Motors late Tuesday, the CEO said, which would help the company make a few key payments.

"During this period, we are focused on moving forward and remain committed to bringing our customers a world-class vehicle, and we remain optimistic about our future and the impact we will have on the commercial vehicle market," Chambers said in a statement. He declined to comment further on the status of the case.

The CEO said in court the company isn't making much from its vehicle sales. It sold two of the approximately $138,000 trucks in the last month, and has about 40 in inventory, worth a total of about $5 million. Meanwhile, production of the trucks at a Roush Enterprises facility in Livonia has halted since mid-January, with Bollinger locked out of the facility entirely since Monday due to $1.8 million missed payments as the contractor moves toward eviction, Chambers said. Roush is contracted to build the trucks, with Bollinger Motors owning much of the equipment inside the plant.

Both Robert Bollinger and the company itself acknowledge a key problem has been obtaining enough funds from Mullen. Meanwhile, Bollinger executives confirmed, Mullen-appointed members of Bollinger's board of directors, who have the authority to call meetings, have not done so for nearly a year, and also have not provided direction on how the EV truck maker should navigate its current dire financial situation. Mullen spokespeople didn't respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.

Bill Burdett, an attorney for Robert Bollinger, said that the company continuing on its current path would amount to "moving the deck chairs around on a sinking Titanic."

Robert Bollinger says in the lawsuit that the receiver is needed to manage, protect and eventually liquidate the company's assets, as it otherwise has not way of paying him or others back. But his attorney said the founder still would like to see the truck maker live on, and still wants to financially support it, perhaps following a sale.

For now, the company's operations have largely ground to a halt. Chambers said even if Bollinger Motors were able to catch up on payments to its suppliers, it would take two to three months to get truck production started again.

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