Area trucking companies shift into growth mode

Springfield trucking company Prime Inc. in December acquired Pittston, Pa.-based Transcontinental Refrigerated Lines. Most of TRL’s 600 employees were retained by Prime, according to Prime spokesman John Hancock.

Hancock said TRL’s former owner, Stephen P. Hrobuchak Jr., approached Prime about purchasing his company after Prime purchased land, added a temporary facility and began planning construction of a permanent facility in nearby Harrisburg.

“(TRL) already had buildings, property and people in place,” Hancock said. “We looked at it and ended up purchasing it.”

Hancock declined to disclose the cost for the purchase, which closed in December.

The 32-year-old TRL freight-shipping network will operate as Prime’s East Coast Customer Service Center.

Prime has 4,700 associates, including company employees and independent contractors. The company operates customer service centers in Oregon, California, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma and Florida. Trucks are dispatched through the company’s Springfield-based computer system.

Hancock said the TRL purchase strengthens Prime’s East Coast market share at a time when conditions are bleak – the American Trucking Association reported that 935 trucking companies shut down in the first quarter of 2008, due mostly to diesel fuel prices averaging $4.50 a gallon nationwide.

“That represents about 42,000 trucks nationwide,” Hancock said. “Fuel is a major, major issue.”

The company purchases more than 3 million gallons of fuel a week; independent contractors receive 100 percent of the fuel surcharge Prime charges its customers, though Hancock declined to provide the surcharge amount.

Con-way Truckload – which was created by the August merger of Contract Freighters with Con-way Inc. – is looking within to set the stage for growth of its freight division and maintain its employee base.

The Joplin-based subsidiary of California-based Con-way Inc. started the Driver Career Choice program in May to encourage drivers in the company’s truckload division to apply for open positions in its less-than-truckload, or freight, division, which usually allows drivers to go home every evening with comparable compensation.

Billy Cartright, Con-way Truckload’s director of recruiting, said the merger allowed Con-way Truckload to offer the new program and promote employee longevity.

“With this merger, we can allow drivers the opportunity to have a career path; once they work with us for a certain time and have good standing, they can move to an open freight job if there is one,” Cartright said. “Then they can be home, have a little more consistency and free time.”

Cartright said one employee has switched so far, though that switch was from the freight shipping business to the truckload division. Cartright anticipates that when the economy picks up, demand for freight shipping will increase as well, creating new job opportunities on that side of the business.

Meanwhile, when Springfield-based O&S Trucking was ready to expand beyond its southwest Missouri headquarters, it added a new office in a town with a familiar name.

In March, O&S expanded into Springfield, Ohio. With a population of 64,000, the southwest Ohio town is within 10 hours of O&S headquarters, making it accessible in one day under current federal law, which limits drivers to 11 hours of continuous driving during any 14-hour shift. The company had also considered a site in Columbus, Ohio, but that site would have been an 11-hour drive from O&S headquarters – which could have been problematic if the current law were changed.

“Most of our freight – I’d say two-thirds to three-fourths – moves through (southwest Ohio) via I-70 on its way to the Midwest or to the East Coast,” said O&S President Jim O’Neal, noting that about 65 percent of the U.S. population lives within a 10-hour drive of Springfield, Ohio. “That’s a good central point logistically for us, so it was just natural to shift our center of gravity.”

The company is leasing the Springfield, Ohio, facility for an undisclosed amount and plans to house 40 to 50 trucks and three or four full-time employees there by the end of the year.

O&S hauls refrigerated trailers as far west as Oklahoma City and as far east as Maine, carrying shipments for companies such as Kraft Foods, Tyson, Reckitt Benckiser and Dole Fresh Foods. In Springfield, the company has 100 employees and 300 drivers.