Heartland Express Acquires Assets From CFI For $525 Million

I'm sure there are a lot of unhappy CFI drivers today.

 

Interesting. CFI just recently bought out D&D Sexton here locally. 50-75 truck refrigerated fleet - serviced Schrieber cheese and General Mills.

 

I’d be suspicious. TransForce is a company that I’m more than a little familiar with. They wouldn’t sell unless that operation was compromised some way, either debt or a profitability issue. Is that company one that they already loaded up on debt and stripped the profitable parts of the operation out of? That’s their usual M.O.

 

Yea that transforce AKA TFI is a Canadian outfit that's been buying up a lot of American trucking concerns. CFI which had been one time bought or merged into Conway truck load was pretty much non existent till TFI came on the scene. It was almost as if TFI resurrected CFI. Transport America was also recently bought an folded into CFI. CFI also had at one point aquired MCT which to my understanding had something to do with how their temp control division got going. TFI also ties in with XPO an Jacobson Transportation somehow or did. Ya can research all this stuff an it just goes on an on. It's traceable all the way back to the old Cornflake ( old ltl consolidated freight ) and the origins of freightliner trucks. Just amazing how companies keep getting gobbled up.

 

The real origins of Transforce was Cabano in eastern Quebec. Alain Bedard was running that and started on a growth by acquisition program. Went on for years and they got pretty big. One acquisition formed Cabano-Kingsway. In Ontario Stan Dunford had turned the sale of his familys business to Laidlaw into a controlling interest in Laidlaw and was on much the same program. Most of Laidlaw turned into Contrans and then the Contrans Group. Between them they bought almost the whole trucking industry up here. Then the unthinkable happened. Dunford and Bedard came to an agreement. Cabano-Kingsway + Contrans Group = Transforce International. Now it’s a monster, but always the same M.O. Buy something, if it’s profitable in general slap the ripped off Nike swoosh on there and carry on. If not, load it up on debt, strip the real estate and profitable parts of the operation to spread out among other TFI operations, and sell it. A train wreck is almost instant, they just get stripped and closed down. I’ve seen it enough now I can tell from over the fence if a new purchase is getting a swooshin’ or a sellin’.

 

It's hard to see how CFI even makes a profit with all of those empty trucks they have sitting at their headquarters.

 

I wonder about all the Megas. I think most of it is Wall St smoke and mirrors. They’re all pyramid schemes that have to fall in on themselves eventually. Even with a steady supply of investor cash how the #### do you crash 10% of your fleet a year and stay in business? I call shenanigans.

 

They didn’t buy CFI’s dedicated fleets or their US brokerage operations.

 

I believe they bought Conway truckload, hence, CFI.

But, I think it's like @kranky1 said, buy up the assets, get the book, sell the assets, and quietly close them down.