Startup company at airport establishes partnership with intermodal giant

11/10/2011

BX Solutions, Inc., the cargo and logistics startup company that last month announced plans to revive the shuttered BAX Global hub at Toledo Express Airport, has established a transportation “partnership” with trucking and intermodal giant J.B. Hunt, BX’s top official said Thursday morning.

The arrangement will enable BX to make use of Hunt’s expertise in supplying an array of transportation options to its customers, Christopher Marshall, BX’s president and CEO, said during a media tour of the Toledo Express hub facility. In particular, he said, the Hunt partnership will give BX access to railroad intermodal service that would be challenging for the company to develop on its own.

Mr. Marshall is among several former BAX Global executives who have formed BX Solutions to create a package handling and logistics center at the Toledo Express hub, which BAX parent DB Schenker closed in early September as part of a withdrawal from the domestic cargo market.

BX and the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, which built the hub for BAX predecessor Burlington Air Express, signed a year-to-year lease for the facility in late October.

During the tour Thursday morning, Mr. Marshall and Todd Hines, the hub’s former director who now is BX Solutions’ vice president of organizational development and leadership, highlighted how most of the 279,000-square-foot main building’s cargo docks have been modified for primary use by trucks, although they emphasized that the facility will be capable of handling air freight as demand warrants.

Construction at the hub is expected to take another week or two to complete, after which employee training and other preparations will continue toward a goal of starting freight handling operations by year’s end, Mr. Marshall and Mr. Hines said.

The BAX shutdown cost 700 employees their jobs. So far, Mr. Marshall said, BX Solutions has made job offers to about 190 package handlers and “50 to 60” managers, the vast majority of whom are former BAX employees.