REGIONAL MOTOR FREIGHT
transportationreport
The big bet
of
Brad Jacobs
The entrepreneur is wagering millions on a bold move
to build a $5 billion truck brokerage from scratch.
COMBINE A SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEUR AND
businessman, an industry ripe for consolidation, and a
cluster of small businesses that may be ready to sell out
at the right price, and, if nothing else, it could create the
most compelling stew of activity the U.S. transportation
industry has seen in some time.
Stirring the pot will be 55-year-old Bradley S. Jacobs,
a balding, bespectacled Providence, R.I., native. Jacobs
may lack the visibility of such buy-out artists as Carl C.
Icahn and William A. Ackman, but he has prospered
greatly in his own right by starting and running businesses in three other industries: energy, equipment
rental, and solid waste.
Now, Jacobs has set his sights on transportation,
specifically the $50 billion-a-year truck brokerage sector, where third parties help
shippers locate available truck capacity,
among other services.
Last year, Jacobs led a team that invested $150 million
in cash in a non-asset–based expedited transportation
company called Express- 1 Expedited Solutions Inc. He
renamed the company XPO Logistics and installed him-
self as CEO. From this platform, Jacobs aims to con-
struct a $5 billion to $6 billion-a-year powerhouse
mostly by unifying a fragmented truck brokerage seg-
ment through a combination of acquisitions and organ-
ic expansion XPO refers to as “cold starts.”
Jacobs, who opened an office late last year in Phoenix,
envisions launching about 20 cold-start offices over the
next 18 months to three years. He said he expects each
location to generate between $25 million and $200 mil-
lion in revenue a year.
In addition, Jacobs projected that XPO would
make five to seven brokerage acquisitions a
year. XPO had not made any acquisitions
as of this writing, though Jacobs said in
