XPO’s Carlisle, Pa., facility sits on a 121-acre site and has 281 doors. (XPO)
XPO officially opened the less-than-truckload-focused carrier’s largest service centers by door number and footprint over the past couple of weeks.
Greenwich, Conn.-based XPO ranks No. 5 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America and No. 4 among LTL carriers.
XPO undertook the ribbon cutting for the Kernersville, N.C., service center June 25. Freight began passing through the terminal in May.
Kernersville is the carrier’s largest service center by door count with 333. It comprises 265,000 square feet of property and sits on 70 acres. Around 220 staff are employed at the facility.
“Kernersville is one of the crown jewels of our network,” Tim Staroba, president of the east division, told TT on June 27.
The Kernersville, N.C., facility, called one of XPO’s crown jewels, is the carrier’s largest by door count with 333. (XPO)
Another crown jewel, he said, is the Carlisle, Pa., service center that officially reopened June 10 — and is XPO’s largest facility by acreage.
The facility is located on a 121-acre site and has 281 doors. Buildings on the site currently comprise 273,000 square feet, but Staroba said the total could be expanded. Freight shipments began in November 2024.
“In LTL terms, it’s a big place. Outside of it being big, it’s beautifully located,” he said. “You can never re-create how that service center is located.” The facility is near interstates 81 and 76.
A previous XPO service center in Carlisle closed in early 2021.
XPO bought both Kernersville and Carlisle from the administrators of the estate of erstwhile LTL peer Yellow Corp.
Alongside many of its rivals, XPO snapped up ex-Yellow real estate, a significant proportion of which had prime locations, even if court filings by buyers and lease holders indicate the level of upkeep didn’t match the lofty status.
Aesthetics are important when investing in newly acquired facilities. “We don’t want it to be depressing,” says Tim Staroba, president of XPO’s east division. (XPO)
“XPO put a lot of investment into [the Carlisle service center], but not more than usual,” Staroba said.
“We always make lots of investments” in newly acquired facilities, he said, adding that the company was particular when it comes to the aesthetics of its service centers.
The company intentionally makes the service centers bright places, he said, adding: “We don’t want it to be depressing. We want our employees to be excited to come to work.”
XPO bought 28 service centers in the first Yellow real estate auction and none since.
The company paid $870 million for the 26 owned terminals and two leased properties.
XPO’s last two service centers acquired from defunct Yellow Corp. are in St. Louis and West Columbia, S.C., both of which are almost ready to reopen. (XPO)
After the administrators’ decision to carry out a piecemeal sale, the initial auction saw 128 of Yellow’s 169 owned properties sold to 21 different buyers, documents filed Dec. 4, 2023, show. The auction brought an aggregate financial yield of nearly $1.9 billion.
That haul topped a $1.525 billion stalking horse bid for all Yellow’s terminals submitted by Estes Express Lines, even with major service centers remaining on the sales block. At the time Yellow closed its doors July 30, 2023, the carrier was operating 169 terminals and leasing 142.
At the time Yellow sought court protection from its creditors, the company ranked No. 13 on the for-hire TT100 and No. 3 on the LTL list.
XPO did not take part in either the second or third auctions of facilities, unlike Estes, which was the second-largest winner by asset count in the first auction and biggest spender in the second.
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“The sites that we wanted, we got. And we’re very pleased with where we are,” Staroba told TT.
Those purchases either added capacity in a growing market for XPO or expanded the company’s network capacity, Staroba said.
“Every one of them that has opened has matched our expectations and more,” he said.
Of the 28 service centers, 26 are now reopened. The reopened service centers are “doing amazing,” said Staroba, adding that XPO has opened the big key network sites.
The last two set to reopen are in St. Louis and West Columbia, S.C. Those facilities are almost ready to reopen, he said.
The first of XPO’s Yellow purchases to reopen were three service centers in Goodlettsville, Tenn., Grand Junction, Colo., and Nogales, Ariz.
Size matters in the top-heavy LTL space as terminals are required for a successful business. In addition, terminals typically require a great amount of land and cost a lot of money to build, and land is hard to come by near major metropolitan areas.
XPO currently has 301 service centers. The facilities have around a combined 18,500 doors. XPO has 17 service centers in Pennsylvania and seven in North Carolina. It employs around 23,000 people in North America.
The company does not intend to open more service centers in 2025, Staroba said.
Staroba said it is hard to say whether XPO would open any service centers in 2026, but the company is always looking for opportunities.
“It depends on what the market holds, and we’ll continue to evaluate opportunities,” he said.
“LTL is a long game,” he said. “We’re continuing to post great results while we’re in a down economy.”
When the freight economy does rebound, he said XPO was perfectly positioned to take advantage of demand growth.
XPO did not buy any rolling stock from Yellow’s administrators.
The company builds its own trailers, and Staroba said XPO typically buys new or late-model tractors. Yellow operated a fleet that was older than the industry average.
Yellow owned about 12,700 tractors and 42,000 trailers at the end of the second quarter of 2023.
