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XPO plans to close distribution center in northeast Pennsylvania

Move to eliminate 111 jobs starting in late November

XPO Logistics, Inc. (NYSE:XPO) will close a distribution center in Jenkins Township, Pennsylvania, and eliminate all 111 jobs at the facility, the Greenwich, Connecticut-based giant said in a recent filing with the state.

XPO made the decision after an unidentified customer chose to use another logistics vendor, a company spokesman said. The Times-Leader, a paper based in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, said that consumer and industrial titan Kimberly-Clark Corp. (NYSE:KMB) has been a tenant at the warehouse. 

XPO operates logistics facilities for large, individual customers. It closes facilities from time to time, usually when customers shift to another vendor. A $17 billion-a-year company, XPO operates transportation and logistics divisions in North America and Europe.

XPO said in a statement that it will try to find jobs for the affected employees at other area locations.


The layoffs will begin Nov. 23, XPO said in a Sept. 24 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice with the state. Under the 1988 law, most employers with 100 or more employees must provide 60 calendar-day advanced notice of a facility’s closing and corresponding mass layoffs.

The XPO facility is at the CenterPoint Commerce and Trade Park. Jenkins Township is a hamlet in northeastern Pennsylvania. Scranton and Wilkes-Barre are its closest major markets.

Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.