Transport and logistics giant Ryder System Inc. said late Tuesday that it has sold its 249,000-square-foot Miami headquarters campus, where it has been located since 2005, to real estate company Bridge Industrial for $42.1 million.
Ryder (NYSE: R) will remain headquartered in Miami-Dade County, where it has been based since its founding by Jim Ryder in 1933. It will lease back its current facility, located on 16.8 acres, for up to 12 months while it looks for new facilities in the Miami-Coral Gables area.
Ryder employs 48,000 workers across North America. However, the Miami location is home to just 800 employees, Ryder said. Many of those workers have worked remotely or in a hybrid-work capacity since March 2020.
“Like many companies post-pandemic, we determined we needed much less office space than we were utilizing at our headquarters building,” said Chairman and CEO Robert Sanchez in a statement. “We were pleased with the current location of our headquarters office, but with the vacant space in the building and the very attractive rates for a buyer to move in or redevelop the site, we knew selling and downsizing was the right decision to make.”
JLL Capital Partners (NYSE: JLL) represented Ryder in the transaction.
In January, Ryder announced it would lay off hundreds of employees after losing work at an Applied Materials semiconductor plant in Austin, Texas, according to a notice sent to state officials.
The logistics and transportation provider said it would cut 801 jobs by March 31 and expects its operations at the plant will be closed permanently.
The job cuts are “due to a customer’s changing business needs,” Anne M. Hendricks, a spokeswoman for Ryder, told FreightWaves at the time.
