RoadOne IntermodaLogistics is acquiring a Georgia-based drayage and logistics company, as well as laying out plans to grow in the busiest U.S. hubs for container logistics.
The Randolph, Massachusetts-based RoadOne will acquire Crown Transportation, based in Savannah.
RoadOne, already one of the nation’s top 10 drayage providers, will add 100 trucks to its company fleet of approximately 1,300 power units. Through its agent network, RoadOne also has access to another 600 owner-operator trucks.
Crown’s other assets include a container terminal in Savannah and 500,000 square feet of transload and warehouse space. Crown specializes in overweight cargo handling and transloading.
Crown’s owner and president, Rick Prevatt, and chief operating officer, Steven McAllister, will continue to run the company. Crown’s operations will be supplemented with RoadOne’s fuel, truck and insurance purchasing capabilities, national warehousing and depot services.
The company will be rebranded as Crown IntermodaLogistics.
“We are all excited to be joining the RoadOne team and looking forward to the next phase of our exciting history,” Prevatt said. “RoadOne’s national presence, industry-leading resources and strong entrepreneurial leadership team will provide us with the expertise we need to expand and build the nationwide Crown IntermodaLogistics transload division.”
Thanks to a series of expansion projects, Savannah’s port saw some of the best growth in container volumes for 2019. Through November, Savannah saw cumulative container volumes rise almost 6%, with import loads rising 7.4% over 2018.
“I’m thrilled to add Crown IntermodaLogistics, a strong, experienced intermodal trucking and logistics company to our national footprint to deliver the increased capacity and comprehensive intermodal logistics solutions our customers’ supply chains depend on,” said RoadOne Chief Executive Officer Ken Kellaway.
Savannah, along with other ports along the East and Gulf coasts, are seeing volumes grow thanks to regional population and economic growth, the availability of low-cost land for warehousing and distribution and sourcing shifts for U.S. goods to countries other than China.
To that end, RoadOne, already an active consolidator in drayage, said it plans more expansion efforts in 2020. In January 2019, middle-market private equity firm Nonantum Capital invested in RoadOne “to support its continued coast-to-coast expansion efforts,” the company said.
RoadOne said it wants to expand its transload operations in Houston and Norfolk, Virginia. Those two ports saw total containers handled in 2019 grow 10% and 3% through November. It also said it would expand in the Pacific Northwest, where the Seattle-Tacoma ports saw 1.2% growth in 2019 container volumes.