PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Carlile Transportation: Celebrating 25 years of success

Connecting Alaska with the Lower 48 and Canada, this Alaska-based multi-service transportation and logistics firm hauls 3.2 million pounds of freight a day and has the largest heavy haul fleet in Alaska

Carlile executives Linda Leary and Harry McDonald provided answers for this article.

Q. Who heads up Carlile?

A. Harry MacDonald is president; John MacDonald is executive vice president; Jeff Allen is vice president of operations; Karl Hoenack is vice president of human resources and safety; Linda Leary is vice president of sales and marketing.

Q. What is Carlile’s main business?

A. Our main focus is offering a wide range of transportation services to our customers, involving all modes of transportation, including truck, steamship, barge, rail, and air freight. We also have a high-tech logistics division that is experienced at meeting complex, unusual and multi-location transportation and warehousing needs.

Q. Who founded Carlile and what was the company’s original name?

A. John and Harry McDonald, who grew up working for their father’s tugboat business in Seward, Alaska, founded Harry MacDonald Trucking in 1975. In 1980, we renamed the company Carlile, which was John’s middle name.

Q. Where is Carlile headquartered?

A. In Anchorage, Alaska.

Q. Where else does Carlile have offices?

A. Kenai, Seward, Fairbanks, Prudhoe Bay, and Kodiak in Alaska. Outside the state: Edmonton, Alberta; Houston, Texas; and Federal Way, Washington. We are building new terminal at the Port of Tacoma, which will be twice as large as our Federal Way facility.

Q. What was Carlile’s first major contract?

A. Our first major contract was trucking urea from the Nikiski fertilizer plant to Delta Junction. Harry McDonald said throughout the 1980s the company grew by hauling everything, including “pipe to the North Slope, asphalt and hot oil, raw milk, urea, grain, and anything we could.”

Q. Who are Carlile’s main customers in Alaska’s oil patch?

A. We do work for ConocoPhillips, BP, Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., Unocal, some of new smaller operators, and we do a lot of work for oilfield service firms.

Q. What is Carlile’s edge over its competition?

A. We try to design programs for customers that meet their specific shipping and logistics needs rather than try to fit them into a mold of our own.

Q. What kind of facilities does Carlile have on the North Slope?

A. We have 40,000 square feet of facilities on 7.5 acres of land at the Deadhorse Airport including two aircraft hangars, one passenger terminal, our freight handling facility, rental warehouses and rental offices. In 1997 we purchased Mark Air’s 8,800-square-foot terminal on the tarmac of the Deadhorse Airport which we have since expanded. This cross-functional facility services the entire North Slope. The terminal, which has truck and heavy-lift aircraft handling capabilities has 14,400 square feet of warehouse space. We upgraded the passenger terminal last year to accommodate daily passenger jets and other traffic in a more efficient manner and we added space and new dock doors to our Prudhoe cargo facility.

Q. How many employees does Carlile have?

A. 500-100 of which are outside Alaska in our Alberta, Washington and Texas offices.

Q. Can you describe Carlile’s fleet?

A. We have late model power equipment tractors and straight trucks. Our fleet of trailers includes dry bulk trailers, liquid bulk trailers, food grade liquid bulk trailers, flatbeds, dry vans, refrigerated vans, ISO containers, drop deck trailers, heavy equipment lowboy trailers, specialized heavy haul module movement trailers, steerable beam dollies and pipe dollies.

Q. How much freight does Carlile haul in an average day?

A. 3.2 million pounds per day is what we averaged in 2004, for a total of 1.2 billion pounds. The volumes of freight coming into Alaska have increased substantially over the last 12 months, especially this summer. It has been a challenge for all the carriers to keep up.

Q. What kind of a safety record does Carlile have?

A. An excellent one. We are well below the national average in the industry and strive to be an industry leader in safety. We have a very proactive relationship with state of Alaska’s Department of Transportation Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Group. We are also active with the American Trucking Association, Alaska Trucking Association and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance to take a positive role to protect our employees and the motoring public.

Q. What kind of safety training do your employees receive?

A. Safety begins with our hiring practices. We hire people who demonstrate a safety first attitude and require applicants to pass a drug and alcohol screening tests as well as background checks. Once hired, they receive an in-depth orientation that covers our required practices and procedures.

Q. Is Carlile qualified to manage and transport all classes of hazardous materials, including bulk, non-bulk and waste?

A. Yes. And all our employees receive customized training in the hazardous materials services we offer, including all nine hazard classes, bulk and non-bulk and hazardous waste. This training meets the requirements specified in 49 CFR Part 172 Subpart H training, and includes function-specific training, modal-specific training and U.S. DOT and OSHA safety training.

Q. When did Carlile become an interstate hauler?

A. In 1994 when we purchased K&W Trucking and opened our Federal Way facility.

Q. When did Carlile start doing heavy hauls?

A. We expanded into heavy haul in the 1980s and focused on specialized module moves in 1998. We have since purchased ASAY Trucking in 2001 expanding our services to include winch truck divisions in Anchorage, Kenai and Prudhoe Bay.

Q. Does Carlile offer customers satellite tracking of shipments?

A. Yes. We were the first carrier in the state of Alaska to have Qualcom satellite units for instant communications and shipment tracking. We got it for high security moves, which is important to the military, but it also provides another safety net for trucks traveling on the Dalton Highway to the North Slope.

Q. Is Carlile expanding any of its locations and services at its locations?

A. In addition to the recent expansions at Prudhoe Bay, we have just added Kodiak, Alaska as a location. In Washington we have outgrown our Federal Way location and are building a new facility at the Port of Tacoma where we will have a CFS station to handle foreign cargo. We will also have a rail spur there. We have final design, financing and pre-construction done on the new

Tacoma facility, which will have 50,000 feet of dock space and 14,000 square feet of office space. We expect to move in by the end of this year.

Q. Has Carlile purchased any new heavy haul equipment recently?

A. We just bought a new 85-ton Aspen module trailer that can haul loads up to 80 feet long, 15 feet high, and weighing up to 85 tons (170,000 pounds). We have the largest heavy haul fleet in Alaska now.

Q. Do Carlile’s customers receive customized tracking reports and can they track their shipments online?

A. Yes — or we can email or fax to them. We have document imaging and can track by purchase order numbers or preassigned customer tracking numbers .

Q. Which bank does Carlile work with?

A. We have a team at Key Bank, led by Terry Smith, that we work with. They have supported our growth over the years.

Q. What is Carlile doing to celebrate its anniversary?

A. In mid-June we held a customer appreciation barbecue. In addition to food and entertainment, we made up a special barbecue sauce for all our customers. We’ve also started doing a newsletter three to four times a year for our customers and employees, which will help keep them apprised of what we’re doing.