William B. Cassidy | Aug 18, 2011 4:22PM EDT
West Coast-based truckload carrier Gordon Trucking bought Buske Lines, an Illinois trucker, for an undisclosed sum, expanding its capacity and its coverage of the Midwest.
Buske Lines adds 150 tractors and 375 refrigerated and dry van trailers to Gordon Trucking’s tractor fleet, as well as a new service center in Pontoon Beach, Ill. The deal also brings more than 100 Buske drivers to Gordon, which has about 2,500 employees and a fleet of 1,900 tractors in local, regional and national service.
“We are excited to add an established company with deep roots in the Midwest to our team,” said Steve Gordon, chief operating officer at Gordon Trucking.
The Buske Lines’ warehousing operations weren’t included in the sale, said Loren Shane, a Gordon Trucking spokesman. Gordon Trucking joins many trucking companies expanding through acquisition — effectively buying existing capacity, truck drivers and lines of business.
Gordon has been expanding eastward for several years, opening a terminal in Green Bay, Wis., in 2005 and moving into Indianapolis in 2007, Shane said.
Buske Lines will take Gordon further into Southeast and Northeast. “That’s a real expansion for us,” Shane said. “We didn’t go into Pennsylvania all that often.”
Buske Lines is the second company acquired in the past year by Pacific, Wash.-based Gordon, which had more than $300 million in revenue in 2010. Last October, Gordon acquired Cascade Express Truck Lines, a 75-truck company in Albany, Ore. Gordon previously owned a portion of the company.
Contact William B. Cassidy at wcassidy@joc.com. Follow him on Twitter at @wbcassidy_joc
