Daseke and Boyd Bros. merge

   Texas-based Daseke, Inc., has acquired Boyd Bros. Transportation of Alabama and its subsidiaries, creating a full-service open deck and specialty trucking company with coverage throughout North America.
   Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
   Boyd Bros. will remain intact, without any personnel changes. Daseke’s president and CEO, Don Daseke, will become chairman of the board of the merger company, with Boyd Bros. president, Richard Bailey, serving as vice chairman. 
   The new company has a fleet of more than 2,000 tractors and 3,600 trailers.
   “The combination puts us well into the top five in open-deck/specialty carriers, in terms of vehicle count and revenues,” Don Daseke said in a statement. “We feel the merger will make us the premier open-deck/specialty carrier in North America. We have capacity and synergy within all parts of North America to serve all those needing open-deck/specialty services.”
   Scott Wheeler, Daseke’s chief financial officer, said he is looking forward to the potential for rampant growth that will be generated from the merger.
   “While our collective group of companies will be able to achieve cost savings through the merger, the greater opportunity is through driving top-line growth,” he said in a statement. “We see very little customer or lane overlap. That’s by design and is an accelerator for new business. We will be able to offer greater capacity, diversity of equipment, reliability and geography to shippers. What’s more, coupling Daseke’s existing logistics services with Boyd Logistics will give us greater opportunities to keep those shipments in-house, increasing our margins with no increase in cost to our customers. We think this is one of those special occasions where one plus one really does equal three.”