What Ever Happened To This Great Company?

From what I can gather Star was started in 1940 used to haul a lot for International Harvester who had a plant in Morton, IL then they shut that plant down and Star did quite a bit for Caterpillar, but I don't quite know what the actual downfall was, but around 2008 the company started having some troubles.

I think the "greatest recession since the great depression." had a very adverse affect on Star, there is nothing written about them in JOC and I think part of that was because Star was like a mini Mega meaning they looked like and operated like a big McMega Carrier would, and they had some big fancy name brand accounts like a big McMega Carrier would, but instead of having a sea of tractors and trailers they had 600-700 trucks which isn't really all that big considering the sizes of Swift, Celadon, Werner and Schneider.

So basically they were a small fish in a big pond full of competition that could crush the living day lights out of them.

The company only had one terminal and that was Morton, IL.

Now word on the street was they did put some of there trailers on flat cars, but I never saw it, I guess Florida was like a freight dead zone for them and unless they had a driver who lived down there and was heading home they would rail all there trailers to Florida that had loads going to Florida, but I don't know for the most part though they had many freight dead zones.

I know Caterpillar was there big customer and they hauled loads for Kitchen Aid and other name brand consumer goods, but they could best be described as the way Caterpillar goes so does Star.

Well word had it from what I read in 2012 they started buying new tractors had to update the fleet a little bit and the new tractors all had Cat Diesels in them and the motors had some issues and Cat didn't honor the warranty and Star went broke trying to fix and keep all there new junk on the road.

Plus bad economy and I'm sure they lost business and truck payments and stuff they went belly up and Swift came in and took over there authority and started operating Star and then 2014 came and poof Star was gone. I haven't seen a Star trailer in a long long time and I was wondering if any are even still out there.

 

I forgot about them, they would have been bought out what late 1990's real early 2000s would have had to have been because Swift bought out MS Carriers in 2001.