Celadon Trucking Services acquires operating equipment from Teton Transportation

Last week, Celadon Group subsidiary, Celadon Trucking Services Inc., said it purchased a “significant portion” of the operating equipment of Knoxville, Tenn.-based Teton Transportation Inc.

Celadon officials said the deal includes the purchase of roughly 180 tractors and 280 trailers. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“We are excited with the Teton acquisition, as it fits well within the strategy we have executed during similar acquisitions over the last few years,” said Paul Will, Celadon Group president and COO, in a statement. “As with previous acquisitions, our goals are to continue to broaden our customer base with quality customers, add density in our primary traffic lanes, and gain experienced drivers

Will added that based on Celadon’s evaluation of Teton’s business, it felt Teton had a solid, core group of quality customers and drivers.

The acquisition of Teton assets by Celadon follows a December acquisition of a significant portion of the assets of YRC Worldwide’s truckload subsidiary Glen Moore to Celadon. Financial terms of that deal were not disclosed, and YRCW officials declined to disclose how many Glen Moore assets were involved in the transaction.

Celadon Group Inc. Vice President Sales and Marketing Monte Horst told LM that this acquisition is part of Celadon’s long term strategy to add density in its primary traffic lanes, maintain its driver seated count, and provide additional services to its key shippers with respect to dedicated, logistics, TOFC (trailer on flat car), and in this case, an expanded regional offering.

In terms of the biggest benefits of this acquisition, Horst pointed to added density in Celadon’s primary traffic lanes, increased driver seated count, and additional services provided with the expanded southeast regional offering.

When asked if this acquisition and the Glen Moore acquisition are an indication that Celadon is adding capacity, Horst said that Celadon “will see an increase in its capacity offering due to the merger, but the net affect of the acquisition will actually dictate an overall decrease in capacity with respect to Celadon and Teton’s combined pre-deal levels, do to the fact that some Teton drivers will not meet Celadon’s driver/CSA standards and thus were not pre-qualified to receive employment offers.”

Horst said that Teton had a customer base of more than 400 customers and with a few exceptions, Celadon will be taking a strategic approach to focus on the top 90, which are predominantly overlap customers with which Celadon was already doing business.

Teton has roughly 110 customers. Horst said Celadon made employment offers to all drivers that met Celadon pre-employment standards and said that Celadon plans to maintain a small administrative/facility staff in Knoxville.