Canada Cartage Corporation has agreed to acquire The GTI Group, a Montreal, Quebec-based freight conglomerate. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close by year-end, were not disclosed.
The acquisition of GTI subsidiaries like Precision Specialized, Jetco, Nomade Transport and Foxconn Logistics puts Canada Cartage Corporation – one of Canada’s largest transportation and logistics providers – in the U.S. market for the first time in its 110-year history.
Canada Cartage President and CEO Jeff Lindsay said his company had been seeking an opportunity to enter the U.S. market "for several years," but had been waiting for the right acquisition to do so. GTI has main offices in Houston, Texas, Des Moines, Iowa, and Franklin, Tennessee.
"The management team at GTI has built a service offering and platform that prioritizes the customer the same way we do at Canada Cartage," he said, "and we are confident this is the right team for us to partner with to build and expand our North American presence.
We are extremely excited to be joining forces with The GTI Group. Like us, GTI has grown significantly over the past few years and has a portfolio of complementary service offerings that build upon Canada Cartage’s solution line-up, and also adds some new, complementary services to ours," he added.
Canada Cartage Chief Administrative Officer David Zavitz told CCJ that the U.S. market was attractive because it allows the company to expand its logistics services with cross-border customers.
"Over the past number of years, we’ve broadened our customer and revenue mix to include more 3PL logistics services, specifically in warehousing and fulfillment, and in freight management and freight brokerage," he said. "A lot of this work is cross-border in nature, so having a U.S. operation is a natural extension of our services to these customers."
GTI provides customers in Canada and the United States with a range of supply chain service offerings including brokerage, transportation management, freight forwarding, drayage, intermodal, warehousing, and specialty trucking services for oversize and heavy haul freight, and significantly increases Canada Cartage's scale in services such as freight management, freight brokerage and specialized freight hauling.
"As we continue to grow," Zavitz said, "expansion into the much larger U.S. market will bring larger opportunities simply due to the scale of the U.S. market."
As part of the acquisition, GTI will continue to operate under its existing brand and management structure.
"This is an exciting new chapter for GTI, said Richard Lafreniere, president and CEO of The GTI Group. We share many of the same values as Canada Cartage and have been on a similar path of growing our business and expanding our supply chain services. We see tremendous opportunities with this transaction for our people, our customers, and the future growth of our business.”
