Yard management services provider Lazer Spot, Inc. announced that it has acquired third-party logistics company PHB Transport, Inc.
Based in Alpharetta, Georgia, Lazer Spot is the only national provider of yard spotting services – the transport of empty and full trailers in the yards of distribution centers and manufacturing facilities. The company also offers shuttling services for trailers between customer yards, distribution centers, rail yards and the ports for manufacturers and retailers at more than 400 locations across the U.S. and Canada.
Founded in 2011, PHB Transport, also a trailer spotting and short-shuttle service provider in the U.S., is based in Jacksonville, Florida with nearly 200 employees and locations across 11 states.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Private equity firm Harvest Partners acquired a majority stake in Lazer Spot at the end of 2019.
“One of our top priorities over the next few years is supplementing our strong organic growth with acquisitions of respected competitors. PHB certainly fits that bill. We’ve admired their blue-chip client list and their excellent reputation in the industry for a long time,” said Harvest Partners and Lazer Spot CEO Adam Newsome.
The press release stated that this deal was Lazer Spot’s second acquisition in eight months; the company acquired Mesko Spotting Service, Inc. in June 2019.
PHB Transport founder Robert Browning will retire after a “brief transition period.” Browning’s son and Vice President of Operations at PHB, James Browning, will join Lazer Spot’s management team.
From the press release, “Lazer Spot will continue to prioritize M&A activity in 2020 and beyond.”
Founded in 1996, Lazer Spot is a portfolio company of Harvest Partners and is the only spotting services company with a national footprint. The company provides spotting and shuttle services for consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, pulp and paper, retail and other industrial sectors. The company’s just-in-time trailer movements can be as short as 100-yard spot yard movements up to 100-air-mile shuttle runs from facility to facility.
In a December interview, Newsome told FreightWaves that the company moves 25 million trailers annually with its 1,600 power units and 3,000 employees.