SalSon’s plan is to reduce fragmentation through the expansion, Fisk said. (SalSon Logistics)
SalSon Logistics is expanding its core drayage and warehousing operations on the East and West coasts, according to CEO Jason Fisk.
Following the merger of seven companies under the SalSon banner in August, the drayage to dedicated fleet operator is expanding its Newark, N.J., operations and adding hubs in Florence, N.J., and Compton, Calif., Fisk told Transport Topics.
The Florence facility will be a warehousing and transloading hub positioned to support regional Northeast distribution. It will have 25 tractors and 80 trailers plus a maintenance shop, Fisk said. The terminal will extend the company’s Port Newark strength, he added.
Florence will offer a distribution hub between Port Newark and Philadelphia and expand the company’s domestic transportation network.
“In Newark, there’s just not enough real estate,” Fisk said, adding that shipping companies were running short of space for their containers.
The facility also opens up a greater talent pool for SalSon, both in the Philadelphia market and the New York-New Jersey market, said Fisk.
(Aria Deshe via SalSon Logistics and YouTube)
SalSon is expanding its Newark operations, which sit less than a mile from the Port of New York-New Jersey, at the same time.
The company now has over 100 acres in Port Newark for secured parking and offers integrated drayage, warehousing and delivery services, which it says enables 48-hour port-to-shelf turnaround. The facility in Newark has about 1 million square feet of warehouse space.
SalSon has four pillars to its business plan: the Northeast, California, Chicago and the Southeast.
The company’s brand-new West Compton site is still being built, Fisk said. When completed, the intermodal and transloading facility will offer 260,000 square feet of warehouse space, 66 dock-door positions and a 20-acre secured logistics facility.
In 2025, the company wants to expand at key ports in the U.S., Fisk said.
The Port of Los Angeles posted its busiest January ever, with 924,245 industry-standard containers passing through the busiest port in the U.S. compared with 855,652 a year earlier. The Port of Long Beach also saw its busiest January on record.
The company is expanding in Texas where it is looking to add 20 trucks. A facility near the Port of Houston ramped up in 2024 after opening at the start of the year.
When the merged company came into existence, it had 3 million square feet of dry warehouse space across locations in California, New Jersey, Alabama and Washington.
The company had 900 tractors at the time. Now, said Fisk, it has over 1,000 tractors.
Of those 1,000 tractors, more than 150 are zero-emission trucks. With its California heritage, the company began buying battery-electric trucks some years ago and Fisk said: “Alternative- fuel trucks became part of our DNA.”
SalSon’s plan is to reduce fragmentation through the expansion, the company’s top executive said, and it wants to replicate its full-service model in New Jersey across all operations.
The company is running dedicated over-the-road service between its various locations, Fisk said. “We are connecting the dots between these regions,” he said.
The seven companies that merged in August were: SalSon, Sierra Trucking, Vision Logistics, West Group, East Group, Heavy Load Transfer and TriPack Logistics. The combined entity has about 1,000 employees and plans to hire a further 100 team members.
SalSon previously had operations in Newark; Norfolk, Va.; Charleston, S.C.; Savannah, Ga.; Atlanta; Houston; Bakersfield, Inland Empire, Long Beach and Oakland, Calif.; and Tacoma, Wash.
