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

Yeah now trucking is much blander and much more boring we touched on that pretty heavy when we talked about Werner from where they were to where they are now makes me shake my head.

 

TNT Companies an International Empire A Mike2633 Original Series.


Now we have to give thanks to Rene Buron because without him we wouldn't know any of this.


When Leeland James created Consolidated Freightway's he dreamed of having a "department store of transportation."

Well, CF got pretty big and had some container, air and truck and distribution services, but Consolidated Freightways was never as big as TNT Company. TNT Company was massive just massive world wide had there hands in everything everything you could imagine. From LTL Trucking, to Just In Time Logistics to specialty heavy a haul all the way down to bicycle couriers.

Thomas Nationwide Transport which is what TNT stands for was started up by Ken Thomas in Sydney, Australia after World War II. Thomas started up TNT company with 1 truck. He merged with Hungarian Immigrant Peter Abele's in 1967 and that created TNT LTD which became the TNT era that we know of today. No not that goofy TNT that was bought out by FedEx although that was part of TNT but the real TNT this TNT:




The real TNT one of the biggest in the world in there day which was the 1980s through the middle 1990s and a little longer up in Canada.

TNT had a big strong hold up in Canada there was a ton of TNT action in Canada way more then in the USA, and it makes sense Australia, and Canada are all British owned territories so there all under the crown where the USA is not a British owned territory as you all know, the USA declared it's independence on July 4 1776 from Brittan and became it's own country.

However TNT did do a lot here in the USA.

The most famous I think TNT company would be TNT Holland and TNT Reddeway. I think TNT Holland is the most famous of the TNT operating companies here in the USA.



That was the standard TNT livery post 1986 and that was the standard TNT LTL truck in the eastern half of the country in the 1990s all those Ford Aeromax LTL 9000. The TNT Holland Yard here in Cleveland which was down the street from my grandmothers apartment building had a whole sea of Ford's that looked just like the picture above.

 

Yes they are.

 

Yes they are went to MO in 2012 and I remember seeing all the bull haulers with there names lit up at night time on the highway on there trailers.

 

We have some drivers at GFS who have colored lights. One of our transit guys has blue lights and one of the city guys at my yard has red lights.