Dive Brief:

• Schneider bought deBoer Transportation, a regional paper carrier headquartered in Blenker, Wisconsin, according to an announcement Tuesday.
• The smaller carrier’s roughly 160 tractors and 660 trailers are included in the deal. But deBoer’s Wisconsin office and Dallas maintenance shop are not. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
• The deBoer equipment will be integrated into Schneider’s dedicated and power-only services, according to the announcement.

Dive Insight:

M&A in the trucking industry has continued unabated, with larger companies scooping up smaller ones to grow their fleets, transportation networks and services.

Acquiring smaller competitors helps augment carriers’ equipment at a time when supply of new trucks and trailers is constrained and costs are high. Trailer fleet growth this year is expected to come “at a premium,” Landstar CFO Fred Pensotti said in April.

Schneider’s acquisition of deBoer, which was founded as a small family-run cattle hauler in 1967, follows a plan Schneider executives discussed with investors on a February earnings call: investing in trailing equipment to support its power-only and intermodal offerings.

Power-only is a moneymaker for Schneider. It contributed to the company’s logistics revenues soaring 46% YoY in Q4, helping drive its logistics segment to the top revenue-wise, north of even its TL revenues, for the first time.

Power-only allows Schneider to stay “ahead of the market and be very responsive to it,” while providing a buffer in the event of a freight downturn, Schneider president and CEO Mark Rourke said during a Q1 earnings call in April.

“It's more durable from a customer standpoint … but it's also more durable from a carrier standpoint if we go into any type of change in freight condition,” Rourke said.

Schneider used M&A to bolster its dedicated offerings last year, too. The deBoer deal follows its Dec. 31 purchase of Ohio-based TL carrier Midwest Logistics Systems in a $263 million cash deal for the segment.

Schneider sees investments in its power-only and dedicated offerings as keys to its growth.

“The market will best reward the things that we do well,” Rourke said. “We’ve focused our strategic growth driver and thus, our capital allocation around the dedicated truck; intermodal, both container chassis and power, … and then technology and increasingly more trailers for power-only in our logistics business.”