Trucking news: Estes branches out in Minnesota and Washington

Jeff Berman, Group News Editor -- Logistics Management, 8/26/2008

RICHMOND, Va.—Estes Express Lines, a full-service freight transportation services provider, recently announced it has opened up new terminals in the Minneapolis and Seattle areas in an effort to provide more service which Estes said is growing in both areas.

The new terminals are located in Mankato, Minnesota and Everett, Washington, respectively.

Estes said the Mankato terminal provides shippers with direct service throughout all of south-central Minnesota and will help support the growing business levels of the greater Twin Cities metropolitan area, along with becoming a major component of the company’s expanding service coverage in the Upper Midwest region of the United States.

Prior to March, Estes was providing service to Minnesota through an alliance with a partner carrier, said Estes Strategic Marketing Manager Paula Evans in an interview with LM. She added that in March it opened Minnesota-based terminals in Duluth, Minneapolis and LaCrosse—along with terminals in Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa—to complete its nationwide footprint.

“The customer response to our newfound direct coverage was incredibly enthusiastic, and we are continuing to expand as the business warrants,” said Evans.

In the Seattle area, the new Everett-based terminal is geared to help the growing business levels of the greater Seattle metropolitan area, according to Estes.

Evans explained that in Seattle Estes wanted to support the continued growth of its direct service to the northwestern part of the state, which is itself growing at a rapid rate.

“Specifically, the Everett terminal helps eliminate inefficient bridge crossings and traffic logjams on the east-west State Route 520 coming out

of Seattle,” explained Evans. “Now we can provide better service to the local base north of Seattle, whereas before, we had to navigate through that tangled mass to get up there.”

Evans said it is somewhat difficult to determine how many shippers these new terminals are serving, but she did disclose that since the Everett terminal has opened Estes has received 90 skids from a single customer. She added that eight pickup and delivery trucks are domiciled out of the Mankato terminal with two line-haul terminal, with two line-haul drivers that regularly go to that location. And the Minneapolis terminal that Estes opened last

March has 24 P&D drivers, seven long-haul drivers and one hub driver, noted Evans, in explaining that the Mankato terminal effectively increases coverage by at least one third and allows for more in-depth coverage in the outlying areas.

And the Estes Seattle terminal that was established in the late 1980s has 39 P&D drivers plus eight line-haul drivers, said Evans. And now with ten more P&D units and one line-haul driver domiciled in the new Everett terminal, Estes’ has bumped up P&D coverage in that area by another 25 percent.

“The Everett terminal is concentrating on the territory north of Seattle (north of State Route 520) all the way up to the Canadian border,” commented Evans. “The terminal manager has already seen double the estimated bill count.”

Estes Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President Billy Hupp said in a statement that with a major international port in a deep-water harbor and a growing population, Seattle is the economic center of the northwestern U.S. for both regional and international trade, adding that as Seattle’s major metropolitan areas have grown in population and opportunity, the need for additional service in the surrounding areas has become evident.