Coyote says buying Access America helps logistics company grow and thrive

photo Keynote speaker and CEO of Coyote Logistics Jeff Silver speaks Wednesday at the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce's Spirit of Innovation Awards luncheon at the Chattanooga Convention Center. The company 3DOps won the Early Innovator Award and the company Bellhops won the Spirit of Innovation Award.

After building America's fastest growing third-party logistics company in only six years, Coyote Logistics CEO Jeff Silver says he wasn't interested in buying another rapidly growing company in the industry when the folks at Access America Transport came calling last year.

But Coyote's chief financial officer agreed to the meeting, unbeknownst to Silver, and today the Coyote founder and CEO couldn't be happier.

Coyote completed its purchase of Access America Transport in March, and the company is on pace to boost its revenues this year by a record $600 million as a result.

The merger of the Chicago-based Coyote and the Chattanooga-based Access America created a combined $2 billion-a-year shipping company. The combination was easier than most such mergers because both companies share a similar approach and a culture, Silver said.

Neither company owns or operates trucks. Both Coyote and Access America grew by finding a better way to handle the scheduling and logistics among the more than 3.5 million truck drivers in America.

Both companies have grown by hiring primarily recent college grads, often clad in jeans and T-shirts in open-environment offices, and by focusing on the best service delivery for customers, even when it means paying extra to complete hauls.

"When my wife (co-founder and Chief People Officer Marianne Silver) and I came down to visit Access America and walked into the offices at Warehouse Row, we knew right away we had walked into a situation that seemed exactly like what we had created in Chicago," Silver said Wednesday during the keynote speech at the 2015 Spirit of Innovation Award luncheon. "The main difference was that the shirts and the hats being worn here were of SEC teams and not the Big 10 teams were were used to at our home office."

Silver said he agreed to buy Access America "because we felt the same pump and engaged passion of the employees that we have tried to build" since starting Coyote in 2006.

Silver said it's a passion he first noticed when he met former Access America co-founder and CEO Ted Alling at an industry conference years ago.

"This fresh-faced pup bounds up to me and says, "hey do you have time to have lunch because I'd like to learn about your business,' " Silver recalled. "For me to sit down with a competitor is not something I like to do. But there was something about the excitement of this kids face that made me want to sit down over the course of the next hour and a half and tell him most every secret of anything we ever did."

Silver said getting the right people, technology and passion has been key to the success of Coyote -- and most American businesses today.

Coyote operates more than a dozen offices across the country and employs 230 workers in Chattanooga. The Chicago headquarters has about 1,000 workers, but Silver said he is looking to grow business and staff, not simply cut costs through the merger.

Today, Coyote moves about 6,000 loads around the country every day and the company serves more than 14,000 shippers across a variety of industries.

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340

News report from the merger:

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