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

Did you guys notice the little trailer next to the CCX trailer? It's TNT Distribution Services. I have to research Distribution Services more and see what that actually means. If I had to guess it had something to do with delivery of one off things like appliances and stuff a service to retail store operations.

Look at the sign on the building TNT Distribution Serices

TNT Dougan
TNT Overland Express

That terminal in the picture is in the Chicago area, you call tell it's a big way point terminal where all the regional carriers meet up with each other and swap freight.

 

TNT had many many split hairs. The top companies were all regional LTL Carriers the rest of there collection was all specialty stuff and one off stuff that did certain things, however there US operations are nothing like Canada. You talk about split hairs and double dipping! TNT Canada had companies for companies doing the exact same things.

Now what's funny is this is coming around again J.B. Hunt and Schneider with there different divisions now the only difference was J.B. Hunt and Schneider both grew organically. TNT had some trouble in the organic growth department and in the 1980s when TNT was at there peak they were buying companies up left and right and starting there different goofy goof companies up to.

They were like look there's a good regional LTL company lets buy them.

Oh look we can deliver products to people's homes lets start a distribution service which now would be called a final mile service.

I do notice that companies for the most part don't division them selves off like that anymore. That was a 1980s and 1990s thing. The only company that still has it's self division off is the Canadian company Transforce. Other then that they all run under the same flag now. Like 2006 Con-Way merged all the regional s together and got rid of a lot of there split hairs all those different things. TNT certainly did split hairs look at the Canada list that Mr. Buron put together. Look at the companies for companies. They probably had companies competing for business against each other. Why would Olex and Taxi Truck both expedited carriers, both based in Ontario Canada both TNT why are there two separate companies owned by the same company offering the same exact service to the same exact customer base competing against each other for the same business? Eventually TNT did merge Olex and Taxi Truck.

The problem with TNT was every time they got into something new they went out and started up a new company and in Canada they had redundant services for redundant services. TNT that flag lasted longer in Canada then it did in the US. In the US TNT was done in 1996 in Canada that flag lasted until about 2002ish. When the fake TNT took over and then eventually Ceva Logistics took over a lot of there stuff because TNT was bought out by the Dutch Post and then bought out by FedEx however by that time they had way divested them selves from all the other stuff they were doing.

What happened with TNT was they collapsed essentially under there own weight in my opinion. They had to many companies competing against them selves and there were boarder col lashes and split divisions of companies and plus TNT had gotten hurt in the early 1990s recession and had to restructure and what ended up happening the US companies Holland, Red Star etc etc they ended up being spun off in 1996 from TNT and became US Freightways hence USF Red Star, USF Dougan, USF Reddeway etc etc.

USF Red Star went under in 2004 they had a union dispute and USF put the company out of business. I'm not sure when the other USF's went under. The only 2 left are Holland and Reddeway the rest of the empire is all gone. Reddeway and Holland were bought out by YRC. So US Freightways isn't even around anymore, that's why you don't see that USF logo on new equipment for a while though it was a total mess before YRC decided what they wanted to do, Holland was going to be USF in 2004 USF was going to be the company and then that changed to where they dropped the USF and changed it to Holland.

But that certainly was a 1980s and 1990s thing to have 10 different branded companies all with there own equipment and things running under the same parent company all kind of competing with each other.

Look
CCX
CSE
CWX
CEX
CSW
Conway-NOW
CWT-Conway Truck Load Service

all different brands and names on the side of the trailers all color coded.

Then in 2006 they merged them togther and it was Con-Way Freight
Con-Way Truck Load-the old CFI
Con-Way Menlo Logistics

Which was a lot simpler then all this mess of regional companies.

Anymore though companies don't split hairs like that. You call Old Dominion for something you tell them what you want and they say fine we can do that or no we can't. There isn't this that's not us call this number instead.

I can understand the regional LTL carriers I get confused when they start talking about all these specialty companies like auto parts hauling and just in time hauling for the auto industries and logistic supply chain vs distribution services.

By the way I've come to determine

Logistics Supply Chain Services is pretty much warehouse to commercial end user. Like auto parts from the auto parts warehouse to the automobile service department dealership.

Distribution Service is commercial end user to consumer end user.
Like before J.B. Hunt bought out Jack in the Box private fleet the door of Jack In the Box tractors said Jack In the Box Supply Chain Logistics or something like that. In other words factory/warehouse to commercial end user.

But TNT had a lot of redundancy in there catalog especially Canada.

 

A lot of there stuff was in Canada companies for companies up in Canada. In 1997 Dutch KPN Group took over TNT management and that's when a lot of the TNT companies started getting sold off and going away because KPN Group divested them selves from certain operations.

 

TNT Holland 1984-1996

There it is everyone the TNT Holland Romulus, Michigan Terminal in 1996 that's what it looked like up here in the auto belt in the late winter in the 1990s. Look at that bad road and pot holes and debris and crap on the road.



Holland was founded in Holland Michigan in 1929 and in 1984-1985 was acquired by TNT LTD and became TNT Holland which is what really put it on the map.

In 1996 TNT spun off the US LTL operations and Holland became USF Holland.

In 2005 YRC bought out US Freightways and the company became Holland.

Holland was always known as being a high performance carrier next day delivery and high and low claims ratio they also had one of the largest foot prints around of a regional carrier.

Holland is still a high performance carrier and was one of YRC's shining star among YRC's portfolio of not so well performing companies.

Holland is still in business today and business is booming, and they still have plenty of USF and probably TNT trailers and a few tractors that are very old out on the road today. Although I have noticed newer equipment slowly starting to trickle in.

USF Holland Terminal 7:15pm Friday May of 2016. Still a lot of TNT era paint out there. Cleveland, Ohio.


Cleveland Ohio TNT Holland and Later USF Holland and Later Holland Terminal this terminal is still the Holland Terminal for the Cleveland, Ohio area.