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Dive Brief:
- ADL Final Mile has purchased Florida delivery company Sonic Transportation and Logistics as the last-mile carrier pursues growth through acquisitions, according to a February news release. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
- The acquisition bolsters ADL's footprint in Florida and fuels volume growth outside of auto parts, its core vertical in the Southeast. Much of Sonic's volume is lightweight home deliveries for orders from Temu and other e-commerce businesses, ADL President Thomas Jowers told Supply Chain Dive.
- "We've got to learn that vertical and absorb them into the operations that we already run in the Southeast," Jowers said. "It presents a lot of opportunity for us from the e-commerce side of things for sure."
Dive Insight:
The Sonic acquisition positions ADL for further volume growth amid a challenging market for parcel carriers.
ADL formed in 2022 from the merger of two regional carriers — Southeast-focused ADL Delivery and Midwest-focused Capital Express — and handles about 21 million deliveries a year across 16 states, Jowers said.
Jowers highlighted ADL's pricing and transit times as an edge over FedEx and UPS' ground shipping services in markets it competes with the two delivery giants in.
"Typically we're less expensive," Jowers said. "UPS Ground could take two or three days, everything that we do typically is overnight, next day or second day. So we're trying to be a better option in the marketplace."
Sonic strengthens ADL's presence in the Florida marketplace. While ADL plans to shrink Sonic's headcount and eliminate overlap in terms of facility operations and routes, it will only make cuts where necessary, according to Jowers.
"Typically in these deals, the people that come with the deal, they've got tribal knowledge of everything that's going on and the last thing that you want to do is remove that tribal knowledge," Jowers said.
The news release noted that ADL has plenty of capital available to fund future acquisitions. According to Jowers, the company wants to be "filling everything in between" its Southeast and Midwest coverage areas.
"I wouldn't say that we're looking for anybody in particular," Jowers said. "We're just looking to round out the areas that we're not in and anybody that would be a good strategic plug in for us in markets that we are already providing service in."
