The building on Birchs Road that housed the North Bay offices of Titanium Transportation Group Inc. is for sale and the company's chief operating officer confirms jobs have been lost in North Bay.
"Titanium was fortunate to operate with a great team of staff and drivers in North Bay since December 2015," writes COO Marilyn Daniel in an email to BayToday. "We have necessarily refocused our business as it has been very sensitive to the difficult economy affecting the North Bay area. We have retained a small portion of the business in North Bay and retained some of the staff and drivers."
In other local transportation news, Thunder Bay-based McKevitt Trucking Ltd. has ceased operations. In addition to Thunder Bay, the family-owned business had terminals in North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury, Timmins and Mississauga. McKevitt wound down at the end of October.
Titanium entered the North Bay market after purchasing local trucking company ProNorth in a cash and share deal worth $5.8 million in 2015. Ted Daniel, the company's CEO, said at the time that no layoffs were planned.
"We're hoping to increase the amount of freight by using our ability to expand our network, not shrink it,” said Ted Daniel in a 2015 Northern Ontario Business report. "We're a young company and we're looking to take good existing established companies that are looking into the next generation of companies.”
Titanium's focus has shifted to wider North American operations since the pandemic, especially south of the border. In the years following the ProNorth purchase, Titanium acquired multiple companies with associated U.S.-based logistical offices in locales such as Illinois, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee.
According to the company website, "Titanium is a leading North American transportation company with asset-based trucking operations and logistics brokerages servicing Canada and the United States, with approximately 900 power units, 3,000 trailers and 1,300 employees and independent owner-operators. Titanium provides truckload, dedicated, and cross-border trucking services, logistics, warehousing and distribution to over 1,000 customers, and also owns over 100,000 sq ft. of warehouse space.
"Titanium is a recognized purchaser of asset-based trucking companies, having completed 13 transactions since 2011. Notably, the company’s most recent purchase of Crane Transport in 2023 marked Titanium’s first U.S.-based trucking acquisition."
Under the terms of the 2015 agreement, Titanium acquired all of ProNorth's stock for a total cash consideration of $5.8 million and 1.75 million common shares. Titanium also purchased real estate associated with ProNorth's operations for an aggregate purchase price of $2.5 million. The real estate acquisition was to be funded using $250,000 cash on hand and a $2.25 million nine-year, interest-free, vendor-take-back financing agreement.
"It will create an opportunity for ProNorth to expand," the CEO said in 2015. "We're a public company with a lot of money in the bank to invest in our future growth and get our shareholders a good rate of return over the next five to 10 years."
