CFI Under Heartland Express

Heartland only bought out a portion of CFI. I'm guessing the portion that makes money. I believe it's the LTL side of CFI that crosses borders into Mexico and Canada. There's an article about it in Freightwaves I think.

 

Fartland bought them under financial distress. Stay away from both. Bad news.

 

I worked for Millis Transfer when they were bought out by Heartland and was there for nearly 2 years after the buyout. Nearly nothing changed. Here is what did.

1)Trucks cheapened up a bit. Millis trucks were always spec'd a couple rungs higher than the typical fleet truck and they have dropped down a rung. Still better than average.
2) Fuel stops changed from mostly Loves to mostly Pilot/FJ
3) Shop hours changed. No more evening hours at the bigger Millis terminals. And no Saturday morning hours at the same terminals.
4) They closed the Millis terminal in upstate New York.
5) Took away monthly Blue Beacon
truck washes. See #6
6) The network of terminals available for parking expanded to all of the Heartland network which was a huge plus. You can also use Heartland's drive thru truck washes at their terminals.

All of the office people have remained including dispatchers. Millis was operating autonomously but under the umbrella of Heartland.

 

In truckload blockbuster acquisition, Heartland buys CFI for $525 million - Supply Chain 24/7

 

Millis continued to get new trucks on the original replacement cycle that I was always familiar with when Millis was a stand alone company. To my knowledge that has not changed or changed by much.

 

Yes only time will tell. I would take a wait & see approach and decide from there.

 

Heartland said the same thing about Gordon and Interstate when they bought them out. Most of the drivers I knew that worked for those two are long gone. They all said basically the same thing...Heartland makes a lot of noise about being a good company but they don't back it up with action.