TIP Trailer Services
Organization
TIP Trailer Services is a truck trailer rental, leasing, and sales company founded in 1957. The company's portfolio measures 64,000 trailers. Other operations are trailer maintenance, damage insurance, and sales of used trailers.
Transport International Pool began as “Container Leasing, Inc.” founded on September 12, 1957 by a group of entrepreneurs at 43 South 19th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The company's official filing stated that Container Leasing, Inc. would “engage in the business of buying, selling, renting, and/or leasing for hire all type of trucks, automotive equipment, railroad equipment, marine equipment, aircraft equipment, and containers of any type and description, and any other items of like nature used in the transportation of general merchandise of any kind whatsoever.”
Subject ID: 115593
MoreTIP Trailer Services is a truck trailer rental, leasing, and sales company founded in 1957. The company's portfolio measures 64,000 trailers. Other operations are trailer maintenance, damage insurance, and sales of used trailers.
Transport International Pool began as “Container Leasing, Inc.” founded on September 12, 1957 by a group of entrepreneurs at 43 South 19th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The company's official filing stated that Container Leasing, Inc. would “engage in the business of buying, selling, renting, and/or leasing for hire all type of trucks, automotive equipment, railroad equipment, marine equipment, aircraft equipment, and containers of any type and description, and any other items of like nature used in the transportation of general merchandise of any kind whatsoever.”
By August 1959, Container Leasing, Inc had eight shareholders, led by the original majority owner, Solomon Katz. Katz was also president of Strick Corporation, a trailer manufacturer. After another executive at Strick Corp., William “Bill” Sennett, observed that customers were increasingly asking for rental trailers, the Katz and Sennett founded Rentco, a separate business that used trade-in vans from Strick to serve the rental demand.
Katz named Sennett president of the new Container Leasing business, and its legal framework was used to form a new trailer rental business. In May 1966, Container Leasing changed its legal name to Transport Pool. The firm was operated from an office in California, and its first branch was in North Bergen, NJ. Other locations soon followed in Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Charlotte, NC and Trevose, PA.
Soon, the firm became the first national trailer rental company to introduce a mileage charge and a collision/damage waiver. In 1971, a holding company of Transport Pool was listed by NASDAQ. When recession hit in 1975, the firm's stock dipped to $2 per share. Minneapolis-based Gelco Corporation, a firm that leased cars and trucks to large corporate fleets, offered $5 per share (about $30 million), and Katz, still the majority shareholder, sold the company, which had about 500 employees at the time.
The trucking industry in the U.S. was deregulated in 1980. Prior to deregulation, the authority to transport certain goods along certain routes was trading for hundreds of thousands of dollars, as regulatory hurdles made acquiring new authority difficult. To deal more effectively with outdated inventory coming in from rental and lease deals, TIP launched its first formal remarketing trailer sales operation in 1980.
After the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, there were 18,000 regulated trucking companies. More than 42,000 such companies were operating by 1989. Many of these new companies were unable to afford to buy trailers and looked to rental companies to fill the need for trailers.
Gelco's acquisition of CTI Container Corporation resulted in financial losses that TIP's profits were ultimately unable to offset. In 1986 and 1987, Gelco reported losses of $6.4 million and $4.9 million, respectively. To recover, Gelco sold TIP Europe in 1986 to a management and investor consortium. Then, in December 1987, GE Capital Service, a unit of Fairfield, Connecticut-based General Electric, bought Gelco for about $414 million.
Since its acquisition by GE Capital, TIP's growth had been modest. In 1992, GE Capital brought in Robert M. Agans, one of its financial executives with extensive M & A experience as CEO of TIP and GE Capital Modular Space.
Following two acquisitions in its core product area, Canadian company Intercan Leasing in November 1992 and Transamerica Corporation's 19,000-trailer U.S. fleet the next month, TIP became the largest North American truck-trailer renting and leasing firm, and now owned about 62,000 trailers. Later, in 1998, TIP bought the Chicago-based Trailer Leasing Co. to further expand its domestic trailer rental and lease business.
TIP also took actions to grow and formalize its intermodal container business. In August 1997, GE Capital consolidated TIP Intermodal Services and Genstar Container Corporation, calling the new entity TIP Intermodal Services. This added Genstar's 18,000 intermodal containers to TIP's 6,000-unit fleet. Subsequent intermodal business acquisitions brought the total intermodal fleet to more than 100,000 assets in 1999.
Subject ID: 115593
Subject ID: 115593
