The trucking industry and its support businesses have been an engine of Chattanooga’s growth over the past decade, but a couple of its key players are hitting the brakes this winter with some of their local operations.
Coyote Logistics, the freight brokerage firm that UPS bought after the business helped launch much of Chattanooga’s startup success in logistics when the company began as Access America, said it is shifting 25 carrier sales jobs from Chattanooga to its Atlanta headquarters “to improve efficiency and customer service.”
At the same time, one of the Chattanooga’s most successful startups – the logistics data and news company known as Freightwaves – has trimmed its staff by just over 20 workers in the past three months and is putting a pause on any immediate plans for another downtown building, company founder and president Craig Fuller said Monday.
The moves come as the trucking industry struggles to find a new balance after shipments failed to grow as fast as the trucking inventory, creating net losses in the second half of 2019 for Chattanooga’s biggest trucking company, U.S. Xpress Enterprises, and reduced earnings last year for cross-town rival, Covenant Transport.
Staff photo by Tim Barber/ Freightwaves CEO Craig Fuller stands in Freight Alley, the downstairs portion of the 405 Chestnut St. headquarters.“There are a lot of cyclical headwinds and freight has been in a bit of a recession,” said Fuller, who business tracks the industry and has been forced to limit its own explosive growth pace. “We had to cut back after we had been growing really aggressively because frankly our customers are not doing as well as they had been. We grew our staff faster than our revenues so we had to make these cuts.”