Pilot Freight Services Acquires DSI Logistics
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Pilot Freight Services announced it acquired DSI Logistics, a nonasset-based provider of last-mile home delivery and installation for heavy and hard-to-handle goods.
Pilot’s full-mile and final-mile home delivery solutions continue to benefit from the strong growth of e-commerce in the big and bulky product categories, and with the addition of DSI, these segments represent more than half of Pilot’s revenue, according to Glen Mills, Pa.-based Pilot.
Zach Pollock, CEO of Pilot Freight, declined to discuss the purchase price.
“But I will say DSI is extremely valuable to us in the sense they are already a premium operator in this space and taking its last-mile operation and combining it with Pilot’s operation really does transform both of us,” Pollock told Transport Topics. “That’s the value of this acquisition.”
Pollock
Pilot reported it will integrate the entire Brea, Calif.-based DSI’s leadership team and employee base, consisting of more than 200 individuals, into its corporate structure to support and enhance Pilot’s last-mile home and national customer service teams.
Both Pilot and DSI are nonasset-based, he said, and use “a very robust fleet of haulers who handle that final operation on our behalf. The value is our ability to source, manage and oversee compliance of that diverse network.”
He added all carriers who participate in home delivery are seeing demand outpacing capacity in the door-to-door freight forwarding sector. “And e-commerce and imports are really driving that,” he added.
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There’s a lot of equipment imbalance and port congestion and a lot of linehaul congestion and delay with general freight movements now, Pollock said. “When we look at the way distribution occurs through the last-mile space, it doesn’t encounter the same bottlenecks in transportation on a shipment-by-shipment basis.”
Pilot Freight ranks No. 46 on the Transport Topics Top 50 list of the largest logistics companies in North America. It ranks No. 22 on TT’s list of top airfreight forwarders with 240,000 tons of air cargo shipped.
“What we focus on is being the most competitive we can be for our customer,” he said. “So as long as we stay completely focused on the alignment of our service with our customers needs, then we can demand the volume from the customers. We win the business and then we can more easily partner with the haulers who want to handle the actual delivery. The haulers go where the freight is and the freight goes where the quality performance is.”
Pilot has 96 locations throughout North America, several locations in Western Europe and a presence in the Asia-Pacific marketplace.
In 2018, Pilot acquired Manna Freight Systems to expand its final-mile delivery and installation services of furniture and appliances.
That transaction grew Pilot’s North American footprint to 83 offices from 71.
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