Northeast-based regional LTL carrier A. Duie Pyle expanding in Ohio

Regional less-than-truckload carrier A. Duie Pyle (ADP) is pushing westward, with plans for several service centers in Ohio even as it retains a long-standing agreement with another LTL carrier that had allowed it to serve customers in the Buckeye State.

John Luciani, chief operating officer for the company’s LTL operations, noted that the company – which recently celebrated its centennial – had always been focused on the Northeast. In a 2023 interview with FreightWaves at ADP’s Carteret, New Jersey, facility, Luciani said the LTL carrier was going to stay focused on the Northeast.

In the same way ADP has serviced customers on the Eastern Seaboard south of the Mason-Dixon Line through a partnership with LTL carrier Southeastern Freight Lines, since 2003 ADP has had an arrangement with Dayton Freight Lines to serve Ohio. 

One-day versus two-day

But the arrangement only allowed Pyle to serve an Ohio customer on a two-day basis. That isn’t enough in today’s world.

So ADP’s bigger footprint in Ohio will bring new facilities there despite Luciani’s comment in that 2023 interview that expanded service facilities in West Virginia and Virginia – in Southeastern’s territory – were going to be the last expansions in the Pyle network. 

Pyle does have a service center in Streetsboro, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb. “That has been our gateway into the Dayton network,” Luciani said.

An expansion into Ohio, with its heavy industrial base, seems like it would have been a natural move for Pyle long before now, and beyond the relationship it has had with Dayton Freight. 

But Luciani said the company needed to grow a larger base in its home markets before such an expansion. “In 2010, we had 13 terminals,” he said. “By the end of the second quarter, we’ll have 34. We really weren’t ready to assimilate Ohio before, but we are now.”

The most recent opening was in mid-January: a terminal in Erie, Pennsylvania.

“The reason we’re going west is because we need to,” Luciani said. “We need to expand our direct overnight service into Ohio.”

A. Duie Pyle is “at a competitive disadvantage out of the mid-Atlantic and into Ohio when you look at the competition,” Luciani said, citing LTL carrier Pitt Ohio as an example. 

“We extended our territory to better serve our customers, reinforcing our commitment to providing the fastest and most reliable transit times in the market,” a spokeswoman added. “This improvement enhances our ability to deliver best-in-class LTL services in next-day lanes, ensuring greater efficiency and satisfaction for our customers.”

The company decided to make its move into the state with a network of terminals by seeing how it could expand its partnership with Dayton Freight, Luciani said. But ultimately ADP concluded “the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.”

The spokeswoman said ADP had “worked with Dayton for a year to collaborate on various operational means of improving transit times via our existing networks. In the end we both agreed that the most efficient way was to open physical facilities.”

Luciani added, “We talked to Dayton about creative ways to provide overnight service into Columbus, Toledo and Cincinnati.” But when a workable arrangement couldn’t be reached, he added, Pyle decided to expand in Ohio through its own terminals.

At the same time, he said, Dayton was looking to push east into Pennsylvania.   

Luciani said the current level of freight exchanged between Pyle and Dayton Freight is about 500 shipments per day. (The figure between Pyle’s and Southeastern Freight’s networks is about 800 shipments per day, Luciani said.)

Relationship with Dayton Freight is still in place

If it sounds like the formula for a rupture in a relationship, Luciani said it wasn’t. “They’re a long-term strategic partner, and I don’t see that changing.” For example, Pyle freight shipments that need to go further west than Ohio – into Michigan or Indiana, for example – could still tap into the Dayton network, which has facilities in those states where, Luciani said, “we can provide second-day service through the partnership.”

But not necessarily: Luciani also said a shipment out of a new Pyle Ohio facility could go overnight into Michigan.

At present, freight given to Pyle at its key Carteret facility that was headed to Ohio would be given to the Dayton Freight network. Instead, it will now stay within the Pyle network, which saves a day’s transit, he said.

“The sole motivation to open more facilities is to expand a direct overnight footprint out of the mid-Atlantic region,” Luciani said.

He laid out the current pathway. Freight originating at the Streetsboro terminal near Cleveland goes into what he called a “consolidation trailer,” which is then transported to Dayton Freight’s Cleveland terminal. A break bulk operation is then undertaken, and the shipments are loaded into trucks servicing the Dayton Freight network. 

“The problem is, you’ve built an extra 12 hours of transit time,” he said.

When the network plan is completed for Pyle in Ohio, a shipment out of Carteret might go to the new Columbus terminal and be delivered right out of there, Luciani said.

One of the terminals that will serve Pyle’s expanded operations in Ohio came out of an acquisition of a former Yellow terminal earlier this month in Bowling Green, Ohio.

The Bowling Green acquisition is viewed by Pyle as putting the company into the Toledo market. Luciani also said the company has leased a facility in Columbus, and “we’ve got our eyes on a service center in Cincinnati as well.”

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