TCT Logistics in receivership

CALGARY (Jan. 24, 2002) — TCT Logistics Inc., one of Canada’s largest temperature-controlled trucking and warehousing operations, said today it is in receivership and that its board of directors has resigned.

Management consulting and accounting firm KPMG Inc. has been appointed interim receiver of the company and its affiliates by order of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.

TCT Logistics employs nearly 2600 people. The company’s trucking divisions include Tri-Line Freight Systems, a truckload, LTL, and logistics firm covering Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

Yesterday, the company announced it had overextended its credit lines with its senior lender, GMAC Commercial Credit Corp., and had replaced company president and chief executive officer Ken Lucas with Tri-Line chief financial officer Donald Turple.

Under Lucas, TCT expanded remarkably. Within a span of three days in April 2000, the company transformed itself from an aggressive $100-million temperature-controlled transport and warehousing specialist into a one of the biggest for-hire truck fleets in Canada. Buoyed by $110 million in debt financing from GMAC and $23 million from the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Fund, TCT bought the van and refrigerated trucking business of Kleysen Transport Ltd. for $18 million in cash, stocks, and debt. The next day, TCT agreed to pay $44 million for Tri-Line.

In 1998, TCT bought the grocery warehousing business of Livingston Group and entered the supply-chain management business.