A tanker carrier based in Nebraska is expanding its operations in Texas to serve industrial refineries.
LGT Transport recently enlarged its Baytown, Texas, facility to accommodate the growing amount of industrial gas clients along the United States Gulf Coast.
LGT Transport’s Southern headquarters is presently located in Baytown, Texas, where it manages clients and services in North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas.
According to Pam Spaccarotella, founder and CEO of Omaha, Nebraska-based LGT Transport, the increase in Texas has been driven by chemical and gas refinery customers.
“We are still focusing on the industrial gas industry, and refineries are significant consumers of industrial gases,” Spaccarotella explained to FreightWaves. “We have lately expanded into anhydrous ammonia in the Gulf Coast region, as well as liquefied petroleum gas.”
LGT Transport also has offices in Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee, and California. In 2016, Spaccarotella established a cryogenic manufacturing repair facility and transport terminal in Baytown.
“I have a trucking terminal and a maintenance facility for cryogenic trailers and ISO containers that are used to transport ethylene in the liquefied natural gas market,” Spaccarotella explained. “We outgrew that space, so in 2020 we purchased 11 acres of property, and in 2021 we erected our new facility.”
LGT Transport’s Baytown terminal is presently its largest facility. It has a 4,100-square-foot office and a 20,000-square-foot maintenance facility. In January, the enlargement was completed.
The Baytown facility houses 75 to 100 trucks, with a mix of business drivers and owner-operators. Driver amenities such as showers, a laundry, a break room for meal preparation and storage, and lounge and relaxation rooms were incorporated in the addition.
According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, LGT has 178 trucks and 194 drivers.
Spaccarotella created LGT Transport in 2012 after serving in the Air Force as a missile launch officer. She is an Air Force Academy graduate with a law degree and is a certified public accountant.
“When I first became a CPA, it was during that time in public accounting that I began working with transportation clients,” Spaccarotella explained. “My trucking career really began when I became Cryogenic Transportation’s controller and chief financial officer.”
Spaccarotella rose through the ranks of Cryogenic Transportation to become president and CEO before breaking out on her own to start LGT Transport.
According to the National Tank Truck Carriers (NTTC), an industry trade body, petroleum and liquid tankers may have the largest job openings, with a nearly 42 percent decrease in qualified driver applicants since 2019.
“The driver scarcity has impacted the specialized segment of petroleum drivers especially hard, and the COVID-19 epidemic has further exacerbated the issue,” NTTC reported in an August research.
LGT Transport, according to Spaccarotella, has been quite fortunate in hiring drivers.
“We have fantastic drivers, and we don’t have the turnover or problem in hiring that most trucking businesses do,” Spaccarotella said.
LGT Transport’s main difficulty right now is not hiring drivers, but rather acquiring new tanker trucks.
“It’s quite tough to procure vehicles these days; the major truck manufacturers are way behind on manufacturing this year,” stated Spaccarotella. “Every truck that was meant to be delivered in February has been put back to July.”
A fintech business has raised $16 million to expand cross-border trade.
Mundi, a New York-based firm, just announced a $16 million Series A financing, according to TechCrunch.
Union Square Ventures led the investment, which also included Upper90, FJ Labs, Base10 Partners, Exor N.V., Andbank, AlleyCorp, Operator Partners, and Gilgamesh Ventures, as well as Brex, C2FO, Bluevine, and Wisetack.
“We are quite proud of what we have achieved in our first two years.” “Our objective will continue to assist more Mexican businesses in expanding their foreign operations,” Mundi executives stated in a statement.
Martin Pustilnick launched Mundi in 2020. Base10 and FJ Labs previously led a seed financing of $7.8 million for the firm.
Mundi is a digital factoring finance platform geared toward Mexican freight forwarders exporting goods to the United States. Nonrecourse factoring solutions are used by the organization to provide financial services to transportation and logistics companies.
Transfar Shipping has launched a container service between China and the United States East Coast.
Transfar Shipping, located in Singapore, recently started a China-US East Coast service that includes two Texas seaports.
Transfar Shipping will call in the Chinese ports of Qingdao and Ningbo, as well as the Ports of New York and New Jersey, Charleston, South Carolina, and Houston and Freeport, Texas.
Transfar Shipping now operates one to two direct sailings every month between China and the United States East Coast. The December-launched service is Port Freeport’s first container vessel to provide all-water service from Asia.
“The present supply chain problems have pushed carriers and shippers to investigate additional ports of entry, and Port Freeport has become an intriguing alternative,” said Phyllis Saathoff, CEO of Port Freeport, in a statement.
Transfar Shipping commenced operations as a freight forwarder in July, then in August, it launched liner shipping services on China-US West Coast sailings using chartered boats.
Chinese 3PL Worldwide Logistics, a subsidiary of Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, owns Transfar.
El Paso Logistics Park begins with three tenants.
The first phase of the El Paso Logistics Park in El Paso, Texas, was just completed by VanTrust Real Estate, a commercial real estate developer.
On 59 acres, Phase I comprises four industrial buildings totaling 514,135 square feet. The park is one mile from Interstate 10 and five miles from the Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge, which connects the United States and Mexico.
VanTrust, based in Kansas City, Missouri, recently announced three new tenants for the park, namely OLA Logistics LLC, Interceramic Inc., and Buckland Global Trade Services Inc.
“These three leases are a terrific indication of the industrial demand that El Paso, the world’s largest border community, is experiencing,” said Josh Meredith, VanTrust’s director of development. “This is just the start of what is expected to be a rising market in 2022.”
