(Titanium Transportation Group)

Titanium Transportation Group acquired Oakwood, Ga.-based Crane Transport to drive growth of the Canadian company’s U.S. logistics business, it said.

Bolton, Ontario-based Titanium paid a total of $53 million for truckload specialist Crane, and the deal is the Canadian company’s first U.S. asset acquisition.

Crane, founded in 2001, generates about $60 million in annual revenue and operates about 200 trucks. Titanium completed 13 acquisitions between 2011 and the present in Canada, it said.

Titanium also purchased all real estate related to Crane’s operations, including the head office terminal in Georgia, and its satellite terminal in Alabama, for an additional consideration of $6 million.

Titanium has about 1,000 tractors, 3,300 trailers and 1,300 employees and independent owner-operators. The company has both asset-based and brokerage operations in Canada and the United States across 18 locations.

“The addition of Crane Transport’s full truckload business is highly synergistic within our existing network, immediately adding capacity and valuable new customer relationships,” Titanium Transportation Group CEO Ted Daniel said in a statement.

Daniel said the deal would enable an expansion of the Canadian company’s U.S. presence through Crane’s terminals in Georgia and Alabama.

Following the deal, Titanium said its full-year 2023 revenue is expected to total $450 million to $470 million.

While benefits will accrue from the Crane deal, lower fuel surcharges as a result of a steep decline in diesel prices plus modest freight volumes led Titanium to cut its revenue forecast of $500 million to $520 million.

As recently as the final week of July, U.S. on-highway diesel prices averaged $1.908 a gallon cheaper than a year earlier. While energy commodity complex strength has pulled diesel higher, a gallon of trucking’s main fuel still averaged $1.011 less in the most recent week than it did at this time a year ago, according to Energy Information Administration data.

Titanium reported revenue of $106.3 million in the first quarter of 2023, a 21.8% decrease compared with the same period a year earlier. The company attributed the decline in earnings to weaker transactional volumes and pricing due to softening market conditions. It has yet to report second-quarter 2023 earnings.