GlobalTranz, Worldwide Express Chart Course After Merger
Transport Topics
Connor D. Wolf | Staff Reporter
August 13, 2021
The recent merger of GlobalTranz Enterprises and Worldwide Express is still in the getting-to-know-you phase and steps are being discussed to become fully integrated, executives from both companies said.
Each business is a non-asset-based provider of logistics services. The combined company has offerings in parcel, less-than-truckload, full truckload and managed transportation delivered through proprietary technology.
“We’re more diverse than many of our competitors. We’ve got a much deeper customer roster across the three brands we control — Worldwide, Unishippers and GlobalTranz,” Worldwide Express CEO Tom Madine told Transport Topics on Aug. 10.
“We’ve got three channels to market with these three brands,” added GlobalTranz CEO Bob Farrell. “When you look at the new scale of the combined organizations, the ability to drive technological innovation and pace of implementation, really makes GlobalTranz not only desirable for customers to want to talk to us more than they did in the past when either of us were alone, but with how tight talent is, people want to work here.”
The companies announced June 11 they had reached a deal to combine, and the merger closed July 27. Madine is retaining the CEO post while Farrell will become a member of the board of directors.
“Both companies have a long history of [mergers and acquisitions],” Madine said. “So, the cultures are accustomed to it. Our cultures are actually amazingly similar. So really, we have begun blending into one. Now around the margins, we got our agent partners and franchise partners.”
Farrell also noted that despite those cultural similarities there isn’t a lot of overlap among their customers.
“The beauty of this thing being a combination that is both supplementary and complementary is that our field people are rocking and rolling the way they were before,” Farrell said. “I can say from the GlobalTranz side, as the pieces started to come together, it feels very natural.”
Farrell added that they aren’t going to force anything into place as the integration progresses.
“Culturally, I think we’re already pretty well integrated and that’ll really accelerate in the coming months,” Madine said. “I think we’re already a long part of the way there. Financially and the back office is already done.
“Then in terms of integrating all the other things that you would integrate, that’ll happen over the next handful of months and possibly extending a little longer to get the technology fully integrated onto a single platform.”
Madine also said that part of the integration is figuring out where their services and technology can complement each other and evolve.
“Our focus across the board, for really both brands, is to make the model as digitally enabled as we can,” he said. “Given our parcel orientation, we move over 30 million transactions a year across the brands. So we’re highly focused on enabling these transactions as digitally as possible.”
Madine noted pure visibility to everything that is going on in the supply chain makes it easier to provide customers with a world-class experience.
“They want the tech that we have to enable them to do business with us easily,” he said. “They want it in a way that enables them to integrate with any other e-commerce partners that they may have very easily.”
Madine added in a time when capacity is tight it also is about using technology coupled with the breadth and scale of their partnerships to help customers find available capacity that works for them.
Madine said they aren’t looking for acquisitions just to grow bigger. But when an opportunity arises that would be a good fit, the combined company is in a better position to pursue it.
“I think to the extent that we are interested in pursuing M&A, we’re far more well-positioned to do that today than either brand was independently prior to the transaction,” Madine said.
GlobalTranz ranks No. 27 and Worldwide Express is No. 28 on the Transport Topics Top 50 list of the largest logistics companies in North America.