BY MARK B. SOLOMON, EXECUTIVE EDITOR–NEWS
GLOBAL LOGISTICS
Transportation
FOR NEARLY 25 YEARS, TRANSPLACE,
a third-party logistics service provider (3PL)
based in the Dallas suburb of Frisco, Texas, has
carved out a successful living in North America.
Transplace’s home market remains robust, with
at least five years of abundant opportunities left
to it, said Frank McGuigan, the company’s president and chief operating officer.
Yet when the privately held company
looked for a new owner after its private
equity fund parent made plans to sell, it
had more than North America on its mind.
Transplace wanted a buyer to have a global
network should it decide to expand beyond
North America, a scenario that Transplace has
discussed with many customers who want it to
go global, McGuigan said.
In mid-August, Transplace’s parent, Greenbriar
Equity Group, sold it to private equity behemoth TPG, a
$73 billion company with 16 offices worldwide. Transplace
will leverage TPG’s capital and footprint to make selective
acquisitions, though McGuigan said there is no concrete
plan for the company to make international deals.
Two years before, the transport and logistics services
powerhouse XPO Logistics Inc. pursued Jacobson Cos.,
a U.S.-based contract logistics, transport management,
and packaging company, but lost out to French trucking
and logistics company Norbert Dentressangle S.A. XPO
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Brad Jacobs knew
little or nothing about the company that had prevailed over
his. “I had trouble even pronouncing it at first,” he said.
However, as Jacobs analyzed Dentressangle’s business,
he realized the two companies were mirror images of each
other. Less than a year later, Greenwich, Conn.-based XPO
acquired Lyon-based Dentressangle in a $3.5 billion deal
that would become the springboard for XPO’s European
expansion. Today, the company operates in 31 countries
and is plotting additional overseas moves by leveraging an
For U.S. 3PLs, can the
world be their oyster?
There’s a world of
potential beyond
U.S.-based 3PLs’
home markets. Do
they have the means
to take the plunge?
