Talkin' Trucks With Mike:A History of the TNT Companies

United was the last LTL regional carrier bought by TNT in 1989. It was the smallest of the
6 regional LTL carriers operated by TNT in US.While Holland operated 1,600 tractors and
2,900 trailers, United owned only 170 tractors and 300 trailers. The carrier provided inter-
state service through Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado and had exrensive intrastate authority in Washington, Idaho and Montana.

 

Sounds a lot like Reddaway.

 

You are right SPEEDY'S, Reddaway provided interstate LTL carriage along the 1-5 corridor
through California, Oregon, Washington and up north to British-Columbia. So, it was some
overlap with United in Washington and Oregon for interstate traffic. However, Reddaway was
the sole to provide intrastate service in Oregon. In term of size the Reddaway fleet was the
double of the one of United and its revenue the triple ($60 M vs $21 M year 1991)

 

Transfreight had a very special statute in the TNT stable. The carrier was set up in 1987 as a
joint venture between TNT and Mitsui, an affiliate company of Toyota, to manage as the sole
provider for the inbound supply chain of the then new Toyota Canada assembly plant located
in Cambridge, Ontario. Toyota choosed TNT because its logistics expertise in North-America,
the ability to attune computer simulation to Toyota business needs,sensivity to their culture
and a willingness to invest long term. Transfreight was a Toyota dedicated company in which
all employees were trained in the Toyota way to provide a seamless interface. Transfreight was a kind of in house entity but operated by TNT, Mitsui being a sleeping shareholder.

Over the years Transfreight grows its operations in USA following Toyota in its conquest of
the American market. The company added also outside customers to its portofolio like Yama-
ha, Suzuki, Cami and others. In 2012, Mitsui buy back the TNT participation in Transfreight and operated the carrier on its own until 2015 when Penske Logistics took over Transfreight.
It was a big win for Penske which, to my knowledge, never worked with Toyota before. It is
today one of the three main logistics providers for Toyota alongside Vascor and Ryder System.

 

I'm not surprised because Transfreight operates 2 merge in transit cross docks in the region.
One is located in Dayton and is feeded by the Transfreight fleet with freight collected from
over 130 suppliers. The other one is located in Detroit and is feeded by the Transfreight
fleet and the Ryder fleet with freight collected from over 140 suppliers.

 

So what happened to United? Did they turn into Oak Harbor? (joke)

Was Reddaway also part of TNT at one point, or not.