Smith's Transfer Corporation

[seventiestrucker]

What happened to this company? :?

[1truckingenthuiast]

American freight brought them in 87 or 88 then American shut down in late 88 or 89.

[Gary Smith]

American shut down in August, 1988.  From what i had heard at the time, the merger was a disaster, in part due to Smith's and American having incompatible computer systems.

[Paul Kane]

From what I understand American was alot smaller than Smith's so that didn't help matters.  The red, white, and blue American logo looked odd on the green Smith trucks.

[Big L]

They were doomed from day one.  When American bought ARA Smith, Smith had no real assets.  All of their equipment and  terminals were suposedly leased.  Management was very poor.  I think it was a chance for a very few to make a LOT of money.  They say the reason they closed was the First Bank of Boston withdrew their line of credit.  They filed Chapter 11  The parent company sued.  A year later we got all of our back wages in full, some with interest.  They took the settlement, and bought half interest in Crouse Cartage Company of Carroll, Iowa.  Twelve years later they shut them down.  :-(

[Michael Gully]

You have it all pretty well straight.  One thing not to forget though is that Smith Transfer was a superb company until Jake Smith sold it to ARA.  ARA like most corporations that knew nothing about trucking but none the less bought one really screwed it up.  ARA basically almost gave the company to the old American Freight Systems.  That too is a sad story.  Texas Gas and Utility bought both Terminal Transport of Atlanta, GA and All American Freight of Sioux City (I belive that is where they were from, I know somewhere in the Dakota's.)  They merged the two companies together and it was a down hill fiasco from the start.  Very amazing that both Terminal Transport and All  American were first class companies when ran privately.  But after Texas Gas did their deal with them it was a rag tag shag operation.  Both companies always had clean neat equipment.  The American Freight fleet for the most part looked pretty depressed.  The merger of American and Smith was thought by most in the industry to be short term.  It did not last.  But the holding company did sue the finance company and did win a lot of money.  They did OK with Crouse until they ran the family out and bought the remaining half.  If was short term survival after that.  I think they bought the family out around 1997 or 1998.  I know they were out of it by 1999.  Have a good day.

Michael Gully :-(

[Terry T]

We were the cartage agent for American Freight in Ft Wayne, IN.  When they bought Smith, they cancelled contract with us and moved into Smith's terminal.  At almost the exact same time OK Trucking bought Duff Truck Line which we also did the local cartage work for.  With the loss of American and Duff we lost 76% of our business in a two month period!

[Big L]

Thanks to Dave for this pic.

[ltmdwb]

[Freightman]

This merger happened in July, 1987.  It was quite a shock and at first, nobody believed it.  However, it wasn't long before the problems and flies in the ointment became very evident.  Smith Transfer was a very tough competitor and their people were top notch.  I remember when they bought the old M R & R to get into FLorida.  Service wise they were the best carrier I ever sold against in the areas they serviced, however they weren't real sporty going North-South into and out of Florida and Georgia.  Their service into the Midwest was good, around the Southeast was excellent, however into the Northeast we (Thurston at the time) could usually beat them.  Jake Smith was quite an operator and I heard that he was a good man.  I never knew or met him.  I do know that Smith Transfer adopted an ESOP plan and really snookered the employess by only paying out 10% of what they were promised.  They shut down within a year after merging with American Freight.  Now there was a carrier who was an enigma to me.  In my view they were very indecisive and went about things in a very scattershot way.