Midwest LTL Alvan goes under

Midwest LTL Alvan goes under Regional less-than-truckload carrier Alvan Motor Freight said June 29 that it was shutting down after 67 years in business and filing for bankruptcy protection.
   The family-owned company, headquartered in Kalamazoo, Mich., said a confluence of negative events undermined its viability. Alvan, with 15 terminals in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, was particularly exposed to the economic downturn in the Midwest, especially in the automotive sector. U.S. auto sales plummeted 18.3 percent in June from the year before and the industry is on pace for its worst sales year in more than a decade.
   The 87-day strike at American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, one of Alvan’s biggest customers, dealt a big blow and caused a decrease in other automotive component shipments as carmakers froze production on many lines.
   The company also listed price and margin pressures due to overcapacity in the trucking industry, skyrocketing diesel fuel prices and the credit crunch as factors that contributed to a lack of cash. It had annual revenue of about $75 million.
   Alvan President James Van Zoeren said he had the company on the auction block but couldn’t find any buyers, in part because they had difficulty getting financing from lending institutions.
   The trucking company, which has 525 employees, said it arranged for Central Transport to deliver the remaining freight in its system.
   “Alvan was quickly becoming a dinosaur,” Van Zoeren said in the closure notice, referring to industry consolidation and bankruptcies that have thinned the ranks of family-owned motor carriers. “Our ability to compete with much larger carriers than ourselves was becoming compromised. Our costs were higher and we were struggling to keep up on a technological basis.”
   More than 3,000 trucking companies have gone bankrupt in the past 18 months, but the demise of a mid-size carrier like Alvan and Jevic Transportation, the 71st-largest for-hire carrier in terms of revenue, in May underscore that the current economic doldrums are claiming victims other than just small mom-and-pop truckers. Larger carriers are retrenching and trying to ride out the tough times until the economy bounces back. ' Eric Kulisch