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

TST Solutions Inc.was born from the management buyout in 1998 of the TNT Canada's general and urgent freight operations. In 2000 Transforce bought TST Solutions and
continued to operate TST and its different divisions as a sub group in the Transforce stable.
The TST divisions are TNT Overland, TST Expedited Services, TST Truckload Express and
TST Brokerage.

USFreightways was born in 1997 from the total separation of TNT. For its part, TNT Freightways was born in 1991 from the spinoff of six regional trucking subsidiaries operated
by Transprt Group Inc. , the TNT American holding. Until 1997 the spinoff was a partial one
which gives to TNT a highly complicated financial structure in North-America.



It's never simple with TNT, it's one of the reasons why this carrier is so interesting.

 

SPEEDY's your thought is right on the target. Between 1982 and 1989 TNT had taken over many land carriers in North-America as well as in Europe and had invested a huge amount of money in the development of the air transport group Ansett and the setting up of an integrated air/road European express network.

Due to this, between 1985 and 1989, the long term dept to total assets ratio increased from 41% to nearly 50% which put the Australian group at risk leading into the turmoil which would kick off the early nineties, a worldwide recession hit almost at the start of the decade, structural changes involving the signing of the North-American Free Trase treaty, the setting up of the European Union treaty and the economic recession which affected Australia and New-Zealand which was home of the most important TNT operations. This new environment threw TNT into a severe period of instability.Between 1991 and 1995 the TNT Group had to realign its strategy and totally rethink its structures and operations in the face of its excessive debt and successive operational déficits during 1991, 1992 and 1993.

Just after its recovery in the mid-nineties TNT had a new challenge to overcome. The transport sector saw Postal Authorities, particularly in Europe, come and buy everything they could with their deep pockets in the purpose to diversify their operations in front of the postal deregulation and the coming weakening letters part of their business with the digital communication fast development. It's in that context that the Netherland Postal Authority (KPN) made a friendly public bid for TNT in 1996. KPN was already a partner of TNT with four other Postal Authorities in the joint venture G.D. Express Worldwide trading as TNT Express Worldwide.



As KPN had any transport operation except parcel delivery, the deal guaranteed the future of the TNT's 70,000 employees and provided a good return on their investments to shareholders which have collected a premium of 41% over the stock exchange price of TNT
Ltd's shares. The new Dutch group trading as TNT Post Group (TPG) had to disvest itself
from its logistics operations ten years later because the lack of sufficient finantial ressources
to grow logistics and express operations altogether. But in doing it TNT became too small
to compete efficiently with the big integrators like UPS, FEDEX and DHL.

So at the end of the day twenty years later the only TNT operations which have not been integrated into another carrier is TNT Logistics renamed CEVA supported by an edge fund, Apollo Management.

 

Aha! So the Minitel was an oracular item in more ways than one!

 

Yes, but the arrival of the Postal Authorities in the market backed by the public money from governments changed the ball game and in some way has perverted the competition process.

 

That difference in gov't market involvement was something one doesn't normally consider in the US, very helpful, with that things fit.

NAFTA must have helped a little with reduced costs and delays but perhaps more competition with a lower entry threshold?

Appreciate the backstory about those CEVA trucks that I see out there, thank you.

 

It's my pleasure.

About NAFTA,its implementation led to a sharp rationalisation of manufacturing resulting in many Canadian manufacturing closed down or switching to single product production for both countries. The most significant impact was that, where freight had traditionaly flowed east-west in Canada, it began to move more extensively north-South. The treaty hurt very strongly TNT which dominated the Canadian east-west corridor through a strategy of service saturation the
Group providing general freight (Alltrans Express) including 50% of its traffic in piggy back,
boxcar sercice (TNT Railfast), expedited freight (Kwikasair & Comet), high speed truckload (TNT Roadfast), air freight forwarding (TNT Air) and numerous specialized services.

NAFTA came with the deregulation of the transport market in Canada which allowed major US transport companies to come across the border and bid for work. Suddenly supply greatly exceeded demand and rates dropped alarmingly (up to 60% below the former tariff rates).

 

He answered that here... Copy in the Comet? (2/22) - Historic Commercial Vehicle Club of Australia - Historic Commercial Vehicle Club of Australia

Then,Comet Overnight Transport was set up in 1964 as a joint-venture between Thomas Nationwide Transport and Alltrans Transport,three years before the merger of the two companies in 1967.

Kwikasair was a stand alone carrier until 1968 when the TNT Group took over Kwikasair and operated it alongside Comet.

Concerning Hawthorn Taxi Truck,it was acquired by TNT in june 1970 and gradually integrated over the years into the Comet Overnight division.
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Also of potential interest is this listing... Company: Tnt Australia Pty Ltd, information

Which contains this telling bit...

Tnt Australia Pty Ltd used 178 business names so far,...​

 

49 names still active if I counted right. 53 years in business, a little more than 3 a year with less than one a year surviving. They are certainly not shy to try something.