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.