Xpress Global Systems celebrates 40 years of moving the trickiest freight in America

John Paul Hampstead

Tue, April 21, 2026 astatine 7:00 AM CDT 6 min read

Dalton, Georgia, the carpet superior of the world, has agelong been crushed zero for 1 of logistics’ astir demanding niches: moving massive, damage-prone rolls of flooring that accepted less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers simply couldn’t handle. Forty years ago, successful 1986, a institution was calved present to lick precisely that problem. Originally called Crown Transport, today’s Xpress Global Systems (XGS) has grown from a determination carpet consolidator into a nationalist specialized bearer with a 30-center network, cutting-edge technology, and ambitions that agelong acold beyond its founding commodity.

The communicative begins with the explosive maturation of the U.S. flooring manufacture successful the 1980s and 1990s. Home Depot was rapidly becoming the largest azygous user of rolled carpet successful the country, accounting for astir one-third of each carpet sold nationwide. Yet the freight itself was brutal: mean rolls weighed 1,300 pounds, couldn’t beryllium stacked, and refused to premix with immoderate different commodity. Traditional LTL carriers struggled with the precocious work expectations of installation crews waiting connected occupation sites. Crown Transport was created precisely to capable the trucks of its sister companies — Covenant Logistics and U.S. Xpress — with this specialized freight.

Micky Miller, who ran Southwest LTL earlier starting Crown, remembers the epoch well. The portion was carpet-obsessed and just-in-time proscription was everything. “Carpet was specified a large woody done the ’90s,” notes 1 aboriginal insider. The institution built a defensible niche by perfecting the handling of oversized, damage-sensitive materials that others avoided.

Strategic acquisitions accelerated growth. In 1994, U.S. Xpress Enterprises acquired Crown Transport and operated it arsenic a specialized LTL division. The pursuing year, Crown purchased West Coast rival CSI Reeves — whose founder, Tiny Reeves, had gone to situation for taxation evasion — and the combined cognition became CSI/Crown. In 1997 it absorbed Rosedale Transport’s U.S. floorcovering LTL business, the largest rival successful the North Georgia market, dramatically expanding its Northeast and Midwest footprint.

By the precocious 1990s, XGS (still operating nether the CSI/Crown name) had begun providing warehousing and organisation services for The Home Depot successful Las Vegas, forging what would go 1 of the industry’s astir important partnerships. In 2000 the institution acquired Dedicated Transportation’s airport-to-airport concern and officially rebranded arsenic Xpress Global Systems, signaling an aboriginal propulsion into diversification beyond flooring.

The diversification experimentation proved short-lived but instructive. The airfreight operation, which competed head-to-head with Forward Air, was yet divested successful 2005. The merchantability refocused XGS squarely connected its halfway floorcovering expertise and allowed a web restructuring. “We’ve ever lived to combat different day,” reflected Greg Laminack, existent XGS President and a 21-year seasoned who spent 14 of those years nether U.S. Xpress ownership. “This institution is resilient.”