Aug. 13, 2024

A longtime trucking company is closing in Brandon.

AA Temperature Controlled LLC, which does business as A&A Express, is shutting down its facility at 1015 Ninth Ave.

With the closing, 111 employees working at or reporting to the facility will lose their jobs when operations end Friday, the company reported in a notice of employment action to the state of South Dakota.

The company also works with about 140 independent contractors and 20 additional employees nationwide.

A&A Express “has been in the process of seeking capital or a sale, which, if obtained, would have enabled it to avoid or postpone a closure and continue operations,” president Geno Cannon wrote. “Unfortunately, the company could not obtain additional working capital from its lenders, and the sale process has not been successful.”

The company did not foresee this outcome, and the circumstances were unexpected, but “the company can no longer sustain the operations,” Cannon said. “As a result, the company has made the difficult decision to cease operations and is providing as much notice as practicable of this closing.”

AA Temperature Controlled dates back to 1945 as a family-owned cattle and livestock hauling business in Minnesota. It became Vince Anderson Trucking in 1978 and specialized in refrigerated transportation. In 2012, the company was acquired by Roadrunner Transportation Systems, then became part of a merger four years later. In 2020, A&A Express was acquired by private equity firm Laurel Oak Capital Partners, based in Boston.

The pandemic-driven ups and downs of the trucking industry led to a multitude of economic factors that impacted the business, Cannon said in an interview with SiouxFalls.Business.

“People got into trucking when COVID hit because they saw it as a stable industry, and it oversaturated the market,” he said. “We’re all seeing the same fight for freight.”

Additionally, the market for used trucks “just went horrible,” and the price of insurance, labor and new equipment “is still going up,” he said. Higher interest rates made borrowing more difficult.

Of the 111 A&A employees impacted, about 85 are truck drivers, and other area trucking companies “have all been very nice, and we’re sending drivers to those places,” Cannon said. The rest are office workers who would be good fits in areas such as dispatch and billing, with “good communication skills … proficient at the computer and Excel spreadsheets,” he added.

The equipment, including the trucks and trailers, will be auctioned, he said. The two-story building was sold to an investment firm in late 2022 and will be made available for lease.