Incorporated: 1907 as Lynden Transfer, Inc.
NAIC: 484121 General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance, Truckload; 481112 Scheduled Freight Air Transportation; 481212 Nonscheduled Chartered Freight Air Transportation; 484220 Specialized Freight (Except Used Goods) Trucking, Local; 484230 Specialized Freight (Except Used Goods) Trucking, Long Distance; 483211 Inland Water Freight Transportation; 488510 Freight Transportation Arrangement; 493110 General Warehousing and Storage
SIC: 4213 Trucking Except Local; 4449 Water Transportation of Freight Nec; 4731 Freight Transportation Arrangement; 4225 General Warehousing & Storage; 4226 Special Warehousing & Storage Nec
Lynden Incorporated owns 16 subsidiaries involved in hauling and coordinating the movement of cargo via ground, water, and air. The company operates domestically and internationally, but it specializes in providing freight services to Alaska. The range of services offered by Lynden Inc. includes truckload and less-than-truckload transportation, scheduled and charter barges, intermodal bulk chemical hauls, scheduled and chartered air freighters, domestic and international air forwarding, international ocean forwarding, customs brokerage, logistics for the rail industry, sanitary bulk commodities hauling, and multimodal logistics. Lynden Inc. operates out of two headquarter locations, one in Anchorage, Alaska, and the other in Seattle, Washington.
Origins
A century of development led Lynden Inc. into the three primary modes of moving cargo. Over ground, on water, and through the air, the company hauled goods, calling upon expertise that was first applied to one of the most primitive transportation conveyances, the horse and buggy. The company was formed in 1907 as Lynden Transfer Inc., taking its name from the small farming community it sprang from, Lynden, Washington. The border with Canada was five miles to the north, but the focus of the company was in the other direction, south to Bellingham, Washington. Lynden Transfer was formed to serve a specific route, the 13-mile trip from Lynden to Bellingham, and to haul a specific type of cargo, agricultural products.
Lynden Transfer did not stray far from its original mission for decades. Trucks replaced horse-drawn buggies over the years, but aside from that leap in technology the company remained essentially as it was at its inception, a local hauler transporting agricultural goods in the area surrounding Lynden. The company was destined for far more, however, and its scope began to broaden after it hired a new driver named Henry Jansen in 1940. Known to his friends as "Hank," Jansen followed the orders of his boss, Lynden Transfer's owner, Ed Austin, for seven years before he and two partners purchased the trucking firm, paying Austin $10,000. The change in ownership marked the beginning of a new era for Lynden Transfer, one that would see an insignificant trucking company blossom into a group of companies that shepherded goods of all types by truck, ship, and airplane to destinations across the globe.
First Trip to Alaska in 1954
During its first century of business, Lynden Inc. benefited enormously from a few select decisions and actions, none more important than the company's first defining event in 1953. Jansen, after six years of running Lynden Transfer, was growing restless, ready to take on new challenges and lead his company toward playing a larger role in the freight business. Unlike Lynden Transfer's founder, who looked south for opportunity, Jansen saw opportunity in the north, beyond the border and above Canada in the territory of Alaska. At the time, there were essentially only two ways to ship goods to Alaska, either by ship, or the far more costly option, by air. Jansen calculated he could provide service from Seattle to Alaska for a fee in between the price charged by ships and airplanes, which prompted him to purchase two specially outfitted Kenworth trucks and two 40-foot Arrowliner trailers in 1953. A decade earlier, the Alaska Highway, also known as the Alcan Highway, had been constructed, a 1,500-mile-long pathway from British Columbia, Canada, into Alaska. Unpaved, uneven, and riddled with switchbacks, the Alcan Highway barely passed for a road at some points, much less a highway, and had thwarted numerous attempts by trucking firms to establish regular service along its unforgiving route. Lynden Transfer became the first trucking company to offer regular and dependable service from the United States to Alaska, giving the company a new line of business and, more important, a new identity. Nothing was more important to Jansen's business than Alaska, a relationship that remained vital to the company's health more than a half-century after it was forged.
The two Kenworth trucks and Arrowliner trailers left Seattle in February 1954 bound for Fairbanks. The cargo reflected the fundamental role the company would play to the territory's residents, a load of 36,000 pounds of beef hanging on hooks to be delivered to a Fairbanks grocery store. The first trip, as the thousands to follow, was a difficult one, subjecting the drivers to inhospitable conditions that tested their resolve. The Seattle-to-Fairbanks route took four days to complete, sometimes more, forcing drivers to heat their meals on their engines' manifolds as they made their way north. Among the numerous tribulations endured along the way were flat tires, which occurred far too regularly, often 30 separate times on a single trip. When the Lynden Transfer drivers completed their inaugural journey, the grocery store manager was elated. He put several sides of beef in the back of his pickup truck and drove the meat around the town, alerting residents that fresh meat had arrived. Although the first trip was symbolically important, Lynden Transfer's reputation was earned in the trips to follow.
For a freight company offering a supply line to Alaska, a sterling reputation was everything, making Lynden Transfer the company to turn to for delivering essential equipment and supplies. Jansen focused on shipping perishable goods along the Alcan Highway route, but his trucks were soon asked to assist in other ways. In the early 1960s, the U.S. Postal Service realized Lynden Transfer could do a better job of carting mail up the highway than it could, and awarded a contract to Jansen that his company fulfilled until the late 1970s. In 1964, a devastating earthquake shut down airports, ports, and railroads in Alaska, leaving the Alcan Highway as the only route into the state for a three-month period. Jansen mobilized his resources, dispatching every truck he could find to carry food, supplies, and equipment to support the rebuilding efforts. His success confirmed his company as the trustworthy nexus between the lower 48 and Alaska, generating business from both the commercial and industrial sectors in the state.
Jansen originally entered Alaska to differentiate his company from the service offered by ships and airplanes, but after establishing his company as the preeminent trucking firm in Alaska he began to compete directly against companies using other modes of transportation. In 1967, Jansen's company introduced service on the newly introduced Alaska Marine Highway Ferry Service, orchestrating the movement of vessels from Seattle to Alaska. The diversification led to the construction of freight terminals in Anchorage and Fairbanks by the time the U.S. Congress approved construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline in 1973, a project of enormous scope that provided Jansen's company with a wealth of business. He took his company public in 1972 in anticipation of the project's launch, turning to Wall Street to meet the financial demands of the pipeline construction era. The Lynden name became synonymous with hauling heavy oil-drilling equipment, a service it would provide in Alaska and in other locations where the oil industry focused its efforts. A terminal in Valdez was added in 1975, followed by the establishment of a terminal in Prudhoe Bay, securing the company's presence in locations populated by the oil industry.
The work provided by the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline enabled Jansen to expand his operations, but, ironically, the company benefited most from the project when the work disappeared. Construction of the pipeline occurred between 1974 and 1977, keeping Jansen's fleet of trucks in hot demand, but when the project ended, the company was at a crossroads. Jansen's son, Jim Jansen, who later took charge of the company, explained the effect of the project's conclusion on the future of the company. "What really caused us to diversify was the end of the trans-Alaska pipeline construction," he said in a December 2000 interview with Alaska Business Monthly. "We had the choice to totally scale down, to quit and leave Alaska, or to develop our business in Alaska by diversifying into different transportation modes." The diversification led to the formation of Lynden Incorporated as a holding company for a family of subsidiaries that would be created in the years ahead, each established to play specific roles in moving cargo from one destination to the next. The diversification program began in 1977, the year construction of the pipeline was completed, when air freight forwarding was added to the company's service mix through the formation of Lynden Air Freight. The subsidiary, which functioned as travel agent for cargo, added the third mode of transportation to Lynden Inc.'s capabilities, enabling the company to offer shipping services on the ground, over water, and through the air.
Lynden Inc. had three legs to stand on by the late 1970s, and it devoted the following decades to adding to the services provided via the three modes of transportation. During the latter half of the 1980s, for instance, Lynden Air Freight began handling the movement of art from Hawaiian galleries to the mainland, employing a full-time art coordinator to manage the niche business. "It occurred to us it was a type of air freight puzzle, or challenge, that nearly all our competitors avoided like the plague," a Lynden Inc. senior executive said in a September 11, 1989, interview with Puget Sound Business Journal. The company's involvement in air freight forwarding led it to acquire its own fleet of aircraft, which became the purview of Lynden Air Cargo. On water, the company's barge service from Seattle to Alaska, operated by its Alaska Marine Lines subsidiary, spawned several other subsidiaries that targeted maritime shipping. Bering Marine Corp. provided contract marine services with a fleet of shallow-draft vessels in some of Alaska's most challenging regions. Alaska Hovercraft, a joint venture between Lynden Inc. and Cook Inlet Region Inc., operated a fleet of hovercraft that hauled mail and freight to remote Alaskan villages. On the ground, the company's service along the Alcan Highway, operated through Lynden Transport, was complemented by LTI Inc. which shipped liquid and dry-bulk commodities, and Alaska West Express, a truckload carrier specializing in transporting petroleum products, hazardous and nonhazardous chemicals, and liquid and dry-bulk products.
A Well-Rounded Shipper for the 21st Century
Diversification enabled Lynden Inc. to more than compensate for the loss of work after pipeline construction was completed. A decade later, diversification reduced the company's exposure to a recession in the oil industry, although Lynden Inc. was taken private in 1987 in reaction to the downturn. By the end of the 1990s, the company operated a dozen subsidiaries, the result of its diversification, but it continued to rely heavily on Alaska. The 12 companies generated $330 million in annual revenue by the end of the decade, 80 percent of which was drawn from business to, from, or within Alaska.
Lynden Inc. celebrated its centennial in 2007 having spent half of its existence playing a pivotal role in the development and support of Alaska. From Alaska's status as a territory to its inclusion as a state, the company supplied the expertise and equipment needed to move cargo of any size and virtually any type. Jim Jansen, like his father, was committed to serving Alaska in the years ahead, ensuring that the Lynden group of companies would continue to function as an integral component of the state's commercial and industrial existence well into the future.
Principal Subsidiaries
Alaska Marine Lines; Alaska Marine Trucking; Alaska Railbelt Marine; Alaska West Express; Alaska West Training; Bering Marine; Lynden Air Cargo; Lynden Air Freight; Lynden Expo Air; Lynden Inc.; Lynden International; Lynden International Logistics; Lynden Logistics; Lynden Transport; LTI, Inc.; Milky Way.
Principal Competitors
Con-way Freight Inc.; Estes West; Expeditors International of Washington, Inc.
Further Reading
Dalby, Ron, "Small Company Attitude, Big Company Capability," Alaska Business Monthly, June 1997, p. 16.
DeMattos, Marilyn, "Lynden Air Freight," Hawaii Business, October 1991, p. 78.
Kane, Roger, "Lynden Deploys 'Better Mousetrap,'" Alaska Business Monthly, July 2001, p. 89.
"Lynden: 50 Years a Legend in Alaska," Alaska Business Monthly, April 2004, p. 60.
Orr, Vanessa, "Lynden Inc.: In It for the Long Haul," Alaska Business Monthly, December 2000, p. 58.
Shaw, Daniel, "Lynden Air Makes Buy," Puget Sound Business Journal, December 9, 1991, p. 2.
Wilhelm, Steve, "Air Freight Firm Makes an Art of Shipping Art," Puget Sound Business Journal, September 11, 1989, p. 1.
— Jeffrey L. Covell
