William B. Cassidy | Aug 18, 2011 11:12AM EDT
With a $150 million investment in Express-1 Expedited Solutions awaiting shareholder approval, “career CEO” Bradley S. Jacobs is already looking for another company to buy and bolt onto Express-1 — an intermodal rail broker.
“I’m looking for a good intermodal broker to buy for a platform,” Jacobs told a group of investors who met with him July 28 to discuss the Express-1 investment.
An intermodal brokerage would be the “fourth leg” of a platform Jacobs hopes to build from Express-1’s expedited, freight forwarding and truck brokerage business.
“There are four verticals within the brokerage space that, together, represent a very large acquisition universe — about $200 billion in aggregate,” Jacobs said.
Long-haul domestic freight increasingly is shifting to intermodal as over-the-road truckload capacity tightens, making intermodal options more important for brokers and third-party logistics companies.
Jacobs, the founder of billion-dollar enterprises such as United Waste Systems and United Rentals, wants to turn $158 million Express-1 into another juggernaut.
Express-1 increased sales 9.3 percent from a year ago in the second quarter to $44.1 million, but its profit dropped as it hauled a high volume of freight at lower rates.
“I’ll probably want to do one or two acquisitions later this year,” the head of Jacobs Private Equity told investors. “That would double the size of the company.”
Express-1’s shareholders will vote on his proposed investment Sept. 1. If they approve the deal, Jacobs would become chairman and CEO of the company. Jacob’s comments to investors were included in a transcript of the July 28 meeting his company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Aug. 1.
-- Contact William B. Cassidy at wcassidy@joc.com. Follow him on Twitter @wbcassidy_joc.
