Saia marked its centennial this year with $1 billion in spending and a race with competitors to reopen former Yellow Corp. terminals around the country during a freight recession.

In the decade that President and CEO Fritz Holzgrefe has worked at Saia, the Johns Creek, Georgia-based LTL carrier has hired thousands of drivers and expanded from a regional to a nearly national trucking provider.

Saia’s growth is built on a century of commitments to its customers and employees, as well as a culture the company has developed alongside its growing workforce, Holzgrefe told Trucking Dive in an interview.

“We're thinking about building a business for the next 100 years,” he said.

Founded in 1924 in Houma, Louisiana, by Louis Saia Sr., who hauled produce to New Orleans in the family car, the carrier now has 214 terminals, 6,500 tractors and more than 15,000 workers. It earned nearly $3 billion in revenue last year after surpassing $1 billion for the first time in 2008.

Reaching a much larger workforce requires the use of technology, but no platform can replace the value of face-to-face interactions with drivers and other employees, said Jake Hart, Saia’s terminal manager in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in an interview.

That’s why Saia leadership makes a point of visiting terminals and providing monthly and quarterly updates, along with more frequent interactions with terminal-level management, Hart said.

“Communication is what drives everything,” the terminal manager said.

Evolving operations serve changing customer demand

A focus on the customer and long-term business opportunities has been fundamental, from Saia’s early days to its national expansion, Holzgrefe said.

“That’s how we think about things,” Holzgrefe said. He added that the carrier takes a similar long-term approach to its workers: “How do we make this a place you can retire from?”

Saia’s freight evolved over the past century alongside its customers — from local produce, to Louisiana oil, to LTL shipments, even to a greater-than-usual share of consumer retail this year as industrial demand struggled.

Its move to the Atlanta area, where Saia reemerged as a standalone company in 2006, located the company near a major commerce hub, said Georgia Motor Trucking Association President and CEO Ed Crowell.

“There's opportunities in every direction you look,” Crowell said.

As the most successful carriers do during downturns, Saia has invested in its operations amid sluggish freight demand over the past two years to position itself for the next rebound, the state trucking association president said.

“I think that's good management on their part, that they're ready to be opportunistic in their growth as well as just simply plugging away day in and day out,” he said.

‘Tomorrow is not guaranteed’

Yellow’s bankruptcy last year at 99 years in business was a harsh reminder of the stakes for even the oldest and largest carriers. 

“Tomorrow is not guaranteed for us,” Holzgrefe said. “You really have to stay committed to your core values, and doing the right thing, and continue to perform.” 

Saia will have reopened 21 of Yellow’s old terminals by the end of the year. Beyond the acquired terminals, Saia owes much of its market share today to Yellow, which owned Saia for nearly a decade and oversaw significant expansion during that time.

Yellow became Saia’s parent company in 1993 by acquiring Preston Trucking, which had bought Saia from the Saia family six years earlier, according to a company history.

Saia merged in 1995 with Smalley Transportation, another Yellow division, and opened terminals in western Texas and the Carolinas. The carrier surpassed 100 terminals and extended its reach to 21 states with the integration of the Action Express and WestEx divisions before being spun off by Yellow in 2002.

Saia acquired Clark Brothers Transport, The Connection Company and Madison Freight Systems, as well as asset-light logistics businesses, in the 2000s and 2010s. But Holzgrefe sees organic growth — acquiring terminals rather than other businesses — as Saia’s primary avenue for fulfilling its future ambitions.

“It's all about filling in the map across the country to becoming a full-fledged national carrier,” the CEO said.

Fifty-year employees credit Saia’s people 

Joe Dominguez Jr. and Sheila LeBlanc in New Orleans have borne witness to half of Saia’s 10-decade history as a pair of the carrier’s longest tenured employees.

Dominguez initially was hired almost 50 years ago to work overnight on the loading docks before becoming a driver for a then-whopping $5.25 an hour. He remembers the days of trucks with no power steering or air conditioning — as well as watching the carrier expand into Texas and beyond.

“It just took off like a whirlwind,” Dominguez said.

When the Saia family owners used to visit the New Orleans terminal to distribute annual bonus checks, they left workers with the same reminder every year, he said: “It's hard to get to the top of the mountain, but it's even harder to stay on top.”

“The secret sauce would probably be the people that they hired in the beginning,” the driver said. “We’re still hiring great people right now.”

LeBlanc, an operations clerk with 54 years at Saia, agreed with Dominguez’s assessment of the company’s biggest strength. 

“The best thing about working at Saia is definitely the people,” she said in a video on LinkedIn.

Visuals Editor Shaun Lucas contributed to this story.