Spokane Transfer & Storage Co. is revisiting its roots to keep a stable base in a changing trucking industry, says Doug Ross, its president.


Keeping revenue steady this year with the loss of three of the companys five largest national shipping contracts due to buyouts of those shippers has been no easy feat, Ross says. The company, owned by Ross and his brother, Dave Ross, has managed to do that, however, and expects its revenues to rise 5 percent this year to about $6 million, he says.


Ross attributes that increase largely to added reimbursements for the companys higher fuel costs. He says that even though the high price of diesel fuel has posed a challenge, Spokane Transfer currently recoups between 75 percent and 85 percent of its additional fuel costs by charging customers a surcharge, which is set weekly by the Pacific Inland Tariff Bureau, in Portland.


To offset the loss of the three major customers, the company is branching out into some longer-distance trucking. About three years ago, it also began revisiting a former niche, hauling agricultural products to Lewiston, Idaho, for shipment to the Port of Portland via barge down the Snake and Columbia Rivers, Ross says. He says Spokane Transfer had discontinued the service about 10 years ago, but decided to revive it and now leases a 25,000-square-foot warehouse in Lewiston to store the crops, such as beans, peas and lentils, that it transports.


Spokane Transfer occupies a 4,000-square-foot facility and 1.5-acre truck yard at 407 N. Perry, in the East Trent industrial area, and operates a 10,000-square-foot warehouse in the former McKinley Elementary School building at 117 N. Napa. It runs a fleet of 60 trucks and currently employs 71 people, including about 50 drivers and five workers at the warehouse in Lewiston.


To give it more room to grow, the company is evaluating sites on the West Plains for a possible new 25,000-square-foot terminal and hopes to buy about 10 acres of land next spring as a site for such a facility. It plans to build office space and a dock first and to sell its current Perry Street yard. Eventually, it also would build a warehouse in its new location and sell its warehouse on Napa Street, Ross says. He says the company expects that the new facilities could cost up to $2.5 million.


Ross father, Dale, founded Spokane Transfer as a moving company in 1964. When the company moved into its facility at 117 N. Napa in the early 1970s, his father diversified the company broadly, Ross says. In addition to furniture moving, Spokane Transfer leased smaller trailers to the public for use when moving, had scales to weigh trucks, moved furniture, and sold fuel to other trucking companies, he says.


Around that time, Spokane Transfer also started doing short-distance, less-than-truckload (LTL) trucking. In that business, the company receives freight from around the country via large shippers called interline shippers, and delivers it locally. It also offers warehousing services to its customers, allowing them to take advantage of volume freight discounts by shipping full truckloads, Ross says.


Ross says it became cumbersome to manage the companys various arms, so when Spokane Transfer moved its yard to Perry Street in 1991, it refocused on the LTL business.


LTL was a small part of what we did in those days, Ross says. We moved over here and scaled back on a lot of stuff, he says, adding that the companys mantra became to do one thing and do it well. He says the company retracted from its other enterprises and refocused on LTL trucking as its primary business, which made day-to-day management simpler.


Ross says LTL shipping is less stable now. Large air-freight and shipping companiesUnited Parcel Service and Memphis, Tenn.-based FedEx Corp. among themhave begun buying interline shipping companies and deliver products directly using their own local ground fleets rather than contracting with LTL shippers such as Spokane Transfer.


Ross says that Spokane Transfers efforts to adapt to a changing trucking industry have brought the company full circle.


One of the things I do now is look back at my old notes to see what we did, years ago, Ross says.


For instance, Spokane Transfer has added a few specialized pieces of equipment, including curtained tautliner trailers that can be loaded from the side, to meet the freight needs of one account, so it could build onto its customer base with direct-service runs of about 500 miles to Montana. The distance is beyond the companys traditional 150-mile radius and requires drivers to be gone overnight. Thats a big departure for the company, which has prided itself on always having its drivers home every night, Ross says.


Being in Spokane is helpful, Ross says, because transportation-industry changes occur more gradually here than elsewhere. That way, Spokane Transfer gets to see whats happening throughout the country and gear up for changes as new trends emerge, he says.


Contact Jeanne Gustafson at (509) 344-1264 or via e-mail at [email protected].