Third-party transportation broker Allen Lund Co. said it acquired Northern Freight Services of Middleton, Wis., last month, the latest move in the La Canada Flintridge company’s ongoing expansion effort.
Lund has purchased six businesses, including Northern Freight, in the last 16 months, bringing the number of its locations nationwide to 35.
Northern Freight, employing 16, specializes in short-haul freight, the transportation of goods within a radius of 400 miles.
Doug Clark, Lund’s vice president of business development, said both Northern Freight’s expertise and location are aligned with the company’s growth goals.
He said Lund’s revenue has grown at an average annual rate of 15 percent in the last few years, fed both organically and through mergers and acquisitions.
“My job is to find companies that we can acquire,” said Clark, who joined the company a year and a half ago.
The M&A route to expansion is a challenging one for a logistics company, he said, because of complications in integrating different hardware and software systems.
Founded 35 years ago by Chairman and Chief Executive Allen Lund, the company operates as a middleman between shippers and carriers, finding warehouse space, equipment and the right agencies to move freight for clients.
The company started by moving raw materials and commodities and got into moving manufactured goods in 1990s. It employs about 400 people now.
It has operations across North America as well as some international locations.
Port Search
The Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners last week approved a $127,000 contract with Boyden Global Executive Search of Baltimore to conduct a search to replace former Executive Director J. Christopher Lytle, who left last year to be executive director at the Port of Oakland.
Al Moro, formerly chief harbor engineer at the Port of Long Beach, has been serving as acting executive director.
The commission also appointed Heather A. Tomley director of environmental planning, in charge of environmental initiatives at the port.
With a master’s degree in environmental science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Tomley first joined the department in 2005 as an environmental planning associate. She will begin her new role March 17.
Two-Wheel Transit
Five cities in the San Gabriel Valley are preparing a regional bicycle plan that will be put out for public comment in April.
Monterey Park, San Gabriel, Baldwin Park, El Monte and South El Monte, in conjunction with Day One Inc., a Pasadena non-profit organization promoting public health, have been working on a master bicycle plan for the past two years. The goal was to design routes and add necessary infrastructure, such as bike lanes and bike parking space, to make the region more bicycle friendly.
Javier Hernandez, program director of Bike San Gabriel Valley, said the organization is in its final stage of street audits and bike counts, and Alta Planning & Design, an L.A. urban planning consulting firm, is drafting the plan now.
“It will be the first time we actually present a working draft to the public,” he said. “We are trying to generate a base line for bicycle riding and usage in the cities.”
Some cities are ready to move forward to add infrastructure on a small scale. El Monte and South El Monte will soon start to stripe their first bike lanes; Baldwin Park is going to install additional bicycle parking and a new bike lane soon.
With this plan, the five cities will be joining unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County along with Temple City, Pasadena, South Pasadena and San Marino, which already have bicycle master plans in place, to create “green gateways.”
Day One received a grant of nearly $500,000 from the county Department of Public Health last January and has since partnered with the five cities to invest the grant in improving bicycle infrastructure as well as public awareness.
Staff reporter Kay Chinn can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 237.
