After more than a decade of operating in the Pacific Northwest (PNW), GSC has acquired a PNW-local transloading behemoth, MacMillan-Piper. Expanding GSC’s presence in the PNW container gateway is a major pillar to GSC’s ongoing growth strategy. MacMillan-Piper will continue to operate independently but with extended support and expanded service offerings as part of the GSC family of companies.
Members of the GSC and MacMillan-Piper Management Teams
With the acquisition, GSC gains access to transloading facilities and yards located within two miles of each Pacific Northwest port—Seattle and Tacoma, which are a part of the Northwest Seaport Alliance (NWSA). Five facilities totaling 380,000 square feet of warehousing and transloading space, with capacity for 80 railcar spots and more than 100 dock doors, are now added to the GSC portfolio.
Furthermore, the facilities are equipped to handle specialty transloading capabilities for many commodities including agricultural, paper, lumber, steel and dry bulk. The equipment and expertise required to transload these commodities are complementary services added to the GSC family of companies.
As an example, GSC can now quickly transfer a dry bulk commodity, such as grain, from wherever the processing facility is located all the way to exporting from the NWSA ports. Additionally, GSC can easily service out of gauge commodities, such as steel forged in the U.S. being transported to other areas of the country or even exported for construction projects.
The same convenience of location allows GSC to become a strategic importing logistics partner in the PNW, as they can quickly dray clients’ goods to nearby facilities for quick transloading and transferring to rail, if needed. Overall, these rail-accessible buildings expand GSC’s capabilities, throughput, and service offerings.
With infrastructure located so closely to the ports and accessible via rail, MacMillan-Piper has a strong physical presence; however, the company did not possess the internal infrastructure that would allow a company to scale. GSC brings propriety IT and technology systems, a ‘gold star’ standard of service, operability out of multiple top U.S. container gateways, and the expertise and know-how of servicing Fortune 100 companies.
The acquisition of MacMillan-Piper will bring the GSC family of companies to new heights as a leading provider of third-party logistics services. To learn more about the acquisition, please read the press release. To learn about GSC’s expanded service portfolio, please visit GSC’s services and solutions overview webpage.
