Family-owned trucking company A. Duie Pyle has adapted to deregulation, supply chain changes, and just-in-time delivery

The new emphasis on rapid delivery caused in large part by Amazon Prime is the latest big shift after 40 years of sometimes wrenching deregulation and cost-cutting in trucking, says Peter A. Latta, chairman of A. Duie Pyle, a 4,000-worker trucking firm based near West Chester.

The firm was founded by and named for Latta’s grandfather, a Parkesburg farmer. Latta and his senior managers, among them his son Billy, nephew Jack, and son-in-law Frank Granieri, offer overnight “less than truckload” (LTL) hauling from New England through Virginia, west to Ohio, with regional-hauling partners across the U.S. and Canada. It also offers supply-chain planning, contract services, and new warehouses, logistics centers and other facilities designed to cope with the general speedup in deliveries. Pyle sales topped $700 million last year.

Peter Latta agreed to talk about the firm’s survival and growth amid wrenching changes and the expansion of the warehouse economy. Latta spoke earlier this year at his firm’s West Goshen Township headquarters, warehouse, computer center, and truck yard. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Up until 1980, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued “common carrier” certificates to big national firms, while local carriers were regulated by the states. We could contract up to eight customers. Carriers, not the market, set rates, with government approval and antitrust immunity.

Deregulation [under a federal law passed in 1980] did away with the distinctions. Most carriers today are nonunion. You can file an application, plus proof of insurance, and you’re in business. Of the three largest from back then, Consolidated went out of business, and Yellow Corp. bought Roadway — then they went bankrupt last year, the final end of an era.

With deregulation, the big national shippers were able to force their carriers’ prices down. At first [in the 1980s and ‘90s], shippers determined that with deregulation, they could reduce transit times and maybe stretch [their coverage areas]. The warehouses they closed were in good locations near good intersections, large pieces of land with small buildings. A lot of them got sold to developers.

[Especially after 2000] industry moved factories offshore and stretched the supply chain around the world — then COVID taught everyone how fragile that was. Companies that relied on supply sources 5,000 miles away are now looking to reshore or near-shore. They are talking about making semiconductors in New York and Arizona, with government funding. In Mexico, right next door, is where you are already seeing significant investment, a huge inflow of capital.

We’ve tried to position ourselves as a supply chains-solution provider. We can make arrangements for shippers, find ways to get it there overnight.

Amazon taught the American consumer to want everything delivered yesterday — or tomorrow morning at the latest. Businesses, too. So [the U.S. needs] more warehouses. But there are now significant barriers to new entry. It takes a lot of real estate, you need a lot of docks, and it’s hard to get new ones approved.

In our case, this actually played to our strength. We had already been expanding our network. In 1996 [the year Amazon opened its first branch warehouse in New Castle, Del.], we made a decision that if we wanted to stay in business, we needed to expand our geography. That year we still were just the one terminal here in West Chester. We will soon have 34 LTL facilities, including 18 warehouses.

We aren’t the cheapest carrier. But we encourage our customers to see that price is only one component of cost. There are also costs of service — damages and lost freight, incorrect changes you have to ferret out; missed pickups; delays in transit. We have a 98.3% [on time] delivery rate.

We’ve been building less-than-load, dedicated-to-a-customer logistics and warehouses, sometimes into the same campus. [Shippers keep] inventory in the warehouse so we can offer a late cutoff time [for orders]. It all gives us a competitive advantage. That’s especially important to pharmaceutical companies, retailers, and anyone else shipping to business. Increasing the speed of delivery affects the whole economy.

It’s not easy; it’s not cheap. There’s a lot of fixed costs in this business: real estate, taxes, utilities. When we add more services, those costs spread thinner over more revenues. Like peanut butter on bread.

In 2013 we started dedicated services: A company like Wegman Foods wants to use our drivers and equipment full-time as if it were their own fleet. Last year we did around $135 million in that business.

And we offer supply-chain services, when customers need a distribution point somewhere in the Northeast, but don’t want to invest their own capital, maybe because it’s seasonal. ScottsMiracle-Gro, for example.

And we have brokerage relationships, arrangements with full-truckload carriers.

Technology is always advancing. But in our world, in the metropolitan areas where a driver is making 20-plus stops a day, frequently physically handling the products, I don’t see it.

The likely application is for long-haul, full truckload interstate highway in weather-friendly regions of our country. But even there, any device that connects to the internet is subject to cyber breach, and I do very much worry about 80,000-pound [loaded] autonomous trucks being taken over or otherwise compromised by cyber hackers.

In the warehouses we converted to electric forklifts. It makes for a cleaner environment. The [purchase] cost is more, but over its lifetime, the cost is less. And it’s quiet.

But we have to operate 24 hours a day, and the upgrades in generator capacity to support our electric forklift fleets is significant. The power grid cannot support all the batteries. The weight of an electric truck is more, so it’s more wear on the roads. So electric vehicles for the heavy truck world are a pipe dream.

We have a lot more cameras. We have forward-facing cameras. We’re adding side view and rear cameras. Sensors. You can track fuel and other maintenance [from headquarters].

My grandfather started this business with a six-year-old truck he bought from a neighbor. On April 1, we turned 100 years old. Not many businesses make it to the third generation or the fourth.

In a family business, there’s two businesses: the business of the business and the business of the family. If you don’t pay attention to both, you lose both.

As owners you need to be driven by a sense of stewardship and responsibility. Not a sense of entitlement, not jamming as much money as you can into the pockets of the owners.

In 1996 when we set out to be a regional carrier, our competitors were St. Johnsbury, Red Star, APA, Preston, New Penn, and New England Motor Freight. All those companies are out of business.

How did we survive? I attribute it to our values. Number one is treat others with respect. People work together. It builds trust and brings forward discretionary effort.

Sometimes I say we’re in the software business. But at the end of the day, this is a people business.