Trucking news: Greatwide Logistics Services acquires Camrett Inc., boosts dedicated services 

Jeff Berman, Group News Editor -- Logistics Management, 4/9/2008

DALLAS—Non asset-based third party logistics (3PL) services provider Greatwide Logistics Services said it has acquired Camrett Inc., a Wytheville, Virginia-based provider of dedicated contract services.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. In 2007, Camrett generated approximately $16.5 million in revenue, according to a Greatwide statement. The transaction also includes Camrett’s brokerage business and leasing businesses, which are separate legal entities.

Camrett’s primary focus is dedicated contract carriage services for various industries, including grocery, automotive, retail, and wholelsale, with several well-known customers, including Pepsi Bottling Corp., Gatorade, and Volvo Logistics, among others. It has roughly 90 company drivers and a fleet of approximately 80 tractors that serves shippers in multiple terminals in Virginia, Indiana, and Georgia.

Greatwide Chief Commercial Officer Dick Metzler told LM in an interview that acquiring Camrett fits with the company’s strategic plan, which is to invest in its core dedicated business—the largest unit at the company and reportedly the second largest dedicated contract carriage provider in the U.S. behind J.B. Hunt. Greatwide is also the largest refrigerated dedicated carrier in the U.S. Greatwide’s fleet is comprised of roughly 4,000 trucks.

“A big part of Camrett’s business is refrigerated dedicated,” said Metzler. “Like us, they have a significant part of their revenue in grocery dedicated contract carriage, so that is a pretty good fit in terms of strategic growth. And a big part of this investment is that it will help take us forward and deeper into our core geographic areas of growth and to new customers that we don’t have. It is a good fit overall.”

Greatwide customers—or food and grocery shippers—stand to gain significantly form this acquisition, said Metzler. He explained that the reason Colin Peel, president and co-founder of Camrett, was looking to sell the company was not because it was not doing very well. He said it had more to do with the fact that in terms of capitalizing the growth opportunities he had with some of Camrett’s larger customers, it had to be bigger.

This, he explained, is where Greatwide—as a $1.2 billion company and private equity sponsorship—helped fit the bill for them.

Another benefit, said Metzler, is that Greatwide customers will be able to leverage “blended” dedicated service. Camrett is largely comprised of blended trucks and Greatwide is largely made up of owner-operators, with about 900 of its roughly 4,000 trucks being company trucks, he said.

“We think the ability to provide blended company and owner-operator [services] in ways that other people in our space don’t is also a big part of the interest in this transaction,” he said.  

He added that that all Camrett employees will become Greatwide employees and that the integration will be fairly seamless. And Greatwide will work with Camrett over time to grow some of their existing relationships use some of Camrett’s core competencies in some of Greatwide’s customer relationships. Metzler explained this is more about growth than a fundamental time in operations.

“We were attracted to Greatwide because of its reputation as one of the industry’s most respected dedicated grocery carriers in the United States and because of its fit with our culture and our customers” said Camrett’s Peel in a statement.  “We’ve built our business by offering our customers flexible and high quality capacity.  In most cases, Greatwide’s existing dedicated operations are located near our customers’ distribution centers which will allow us to better serve our customers and grow faster than either of us could have done separately.”